Apple Run

Yesterday my parents and sister and I went on our traditional trip out to Calhoun County in Illinois to buy apples. It's as much about the scenic drive as it is about the apples, although they are certainly delicious! We always cross the Mississippi River at Alton and drive upstream along the Great River Road, along the bluffs. We stopped this time at the tiny town of Elsah for a picnic at the little park there, which is by a spring. A family with two little kids got there just after us, so we got to enjoy watching them on the playground!

We drove on past Grafton to Pere Marquette State Park. We didn't have time for a real hike, but we did walk a little ways up the trail near the parking lot. It was nice to get out into the woods, even though we could still hear the traffic just below.

Actually, it took us a few minutes to get past this gorgeous sugar maple near the parking lot!

  

 Bellflower! I didn't expect to see anything still blooming!

We turned around after climbing up to a big rock outcrop. Here's Joanne checking out a very twisty tree!

This is one of the roots from that tree, coming out from a crack in the rock.

Dad and Mom didn't actually climb up the rocks, just chilled down below.

Joanne took this one of me. Same twisty tree, different angle!

If we'd kept going on the trail, it would have just kept going up, and up, and up...

Here's looking down into the woods from the top of the rock.

Some more weird tree roots and rocks.

A quick stop in the Visitor Center before we went on our way.

We took the Brussels ferry across the Illinois River, just upstream from where it flows into the Mississippi - so it's a long strip of land sandwiched in between the two rivers, almost an island.

It's just a few miles to the two different places where we always stop to buy apples, pumpkins, cider, and sometimes decorative gourds and other things. It's a beautiful drive, through picturesque farmland and also natural flood plain - the road goes along the edge of Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge.

We got two big boxes of apples, Jonathans and Golden Delicious. And they were mouth-wateringly good! There's a reason we keep coming back year after year - it's a great way to really get a taste of fall.