With Fall Comes Apples

 

Brooke decided to make breakfast for herself. I wanted some OJ, so I poured her a glass too.

Bland oatmeal is just what I needed.

Scott said he was going to call his mom.

My aunt got back to me about attending our wedding. She was going to have foot surgery and couldn't travel. Sometimes I wish all my family lived in one area like Brooke's. I had to tell my mom.

The night before I had my bridal shower/bachelorette at my house with my Twin Cities ladies.

We had dinner and drinks at Psycho Suzi's later that night. 

I was able to finish cleaning up before Scott got off the phone.

My mom and I tend to talk a lot. I'm pretty bad a keeping phone calls short.

Since we both had off and it was nice out we decided to go apple picking. I was really worried we wouldn't make it this year with the wedding coming up fast. We decided to go to the Minnesota Harvest Apple Orchard near Jordan (the city, not our neighborhood).

Talking to my sisters hearing about how much work it was I thought I was going to have no free time. I was talking to Chelsea two months before she got married; she was stressed and constantly busy. We didn't start doing any of the work until two months before so I was stressing out that we weren't going to get everything done. 

I think I only stressed myself out because I was trying to get everything done at once. It turns out getting everything done right away has given us plenty of free time this past month. This wedding has turned out easier than I thought. I wish we had gotten married last year.

Scott: Did you get a picture of me at the bank?

Brooke: Yes I did.

Apparently everyone wanted to head south today. 

I hate freeways, so we had to get off asap.

We ditched the highway and took our own route. 

We got lost a few times on the way, but we got there just the same.

The road towards the orchard was under construction. I had a horrible stomach ache since breakfast. I blame the orange juice. The dirt road was bumpy and definitely didn't agree with my stomach.

 

Stop reading if you are grossed out easily. 

I totally puked my guts out orange juice all on the way in to the orchard. I needed to sit for a bit before going anywhere. Thankfully I felt tons better after that. I thanked Scott for not taking a picture me, when that made me remember a time when we first met. We had only known each other for a short while when I threw up in front of him and Scott took my picture with his cell phone. I made him delete it right away. 

I guess I've grown up since then.

We thought we were doing this farm a favor by supporting them during construction, but it was pretty packed.

We'd actually thought of going to Emma Krumbee's and knew that it would be way commercial. This one wasn't much better. Either way I really wanted to go to Minnesota's largest candy store. 

There was a hay ride to the apple orchard. We were about to hop on when we noticed it was just a short walking distance. 

A lot of the trees up front looked picked over. We headed all the way to the back until we were told we we weren't allowed in that section.

Brooke reached as high as she could for the best apples.

When we bought our peck we had to choose between paying more for the better apples or paying less for regular apples. We chose the cheaper bag. The orchard had no signs indicating which apples were what. All they had as some type of indication were different colored ribbons on the trees. We have no clue if we took the forbidden fruit or not. 

 

Brooke's been posting photos of her holding out food on Facebook all year. Here's the apple edition.

 Scott thought our bag was full.

I laughed and sent him back to get more.

 

Now that's a full bag. 

The whole reason we went to an orchard near Jordan was to go this candy store. 

 We first discovered this place 2 years ago on road trip to New Ulm. Last year while camping at the Minnesota Valley State Park we had hoped to find this place again. Apparently we missed it by a mile.

Everyone heading to Emma Krumbee's wanted to stop here too.

During that first visit,  there were just a few cars in the lot. I thought we'd found a hidden jewel. I guess a massive airplane hanger of a candy shop on a major highway can't be a hole in the wall.

 

This time there was a line zigzagging through the parking lot.

The place was crammed with sweetooths.

We got apple strudel from this guy. 

Every couple seconds he'd bring out another pie from the kitchen. 

I think this place had more soda than Soda Pop's in Eagle River. 

This was my number one must have item. They have a wicked selection of root beer. This time I passed up Dog n Suds for Gray's Root Beer from Janesville, WI. 

I'm thinking the sweet corn soda probably had high fructose corn syrup.

 

This family stocked up on, well, everything.

You can see how this place goes on and on.

 

 I told Scott to take a picture of our loot. I did not want to be in the picture. 

The entire structure is now painted yellow. I'm sad to see some of the writing painted over.

 Scott got a caramel apple. 

Apple's are so much better with caramel on them.

 I got peppermint candy to soothe my stomach. 

  I seem to run into herds of motorcyclists on all my recent Minnesota road trips. 

These bikers even set up a motorcycle-barricade in the middle of the intersection, stopping traffic through two stoplights.

 

Scott hadn't eaten anything all day. Except the caramel apple and the apple strudel we scarfed down on the way home. I was hungry too after losing my breakfast. 

We decided to eat at home instead of stopping somewhere to eat. We just had my leftovers from the night before. 

I had kept Scott up most of the night talking his ear off. Neither of us had got much sleep. We laid on the couch thinking of things we could do, but we were way too lazy to move.

  We watched infomercials on PBS. 

I learned that turmeric and black pepper do...something in tandem.

I drank my soda. 

Then we played Katamari. We finally headed to bed at the wee hour of 10 p.m.