We spent the last 3 days up in the Lake Geneva area of Wisconsin, just over the border from Illinois. It’s a beautiful 1 1/2 hour drive from Wheaton, IL through some of the best farm country in the nation. (though not the most beautiful, that’s reserved to south west Wisconsin/north west Illinois/north east Iowa). We take the back roads just to look and drool at the farm land, hoping one day to purchase some of our own. Anybody have a spare $100,000 laying around?
Before coming home we ate lunch at Popeye’s on Lake Geneva and walked along the lake. We decided, if the girls get tired of the water park in a few years we could switch over to doing some boating activities. We’ll see. Oh…I wouldn’t recommend Popeye’s. $16 for 6 fried shrimp, bad ice tea, a bland salad and a scoop of mashed potatoes. No seriously..I could still see the scoop marks from the ice cream scooper they used. I think we’ll find some other local place to try next year. We usually have good luck with local places.
However, the primary reason for the trip was for our yearly apple picking vacation up to Royal Oak Orchard. We picked 1 bushel of Cortland, 1/2 bushel of Jonagored and 1/2 bushel of Jonafree for roughly 100lbs of apples. The Cortland, my favorite, were heavily picked over and looking back through my blog I noticed our last trip was the weekend earlier. This time we decided to go picking on a friday so we didn’t have to deal with the crowds and pay the weekend parking fee ($3).
We picked by ourselves for nearly an hour in the southern orchard. Later in the day, I had the chance to talk to one of the workers, and he said the previous weekend was really busy. They were expecting an even bigger crowd the day after we were there. He also said they run about 20 to 30 staff during the high season, but only maintain about 6-8 full time staff.
All said and done, the apples cost slightly under $1/lb. The local super markets are running specials on the commodity apples (macintosh, golden delicious, etc) for an average of $.79/lb right now, but any other time of year and a $1/lb would be a great price for these. We also didn’t get the standard varieties you find in the store, so I figure they would be at least $1.50/lb. Even if they were more expensive I’d pay. I hate the store variety of apples. Usually mushy and without flavor. When I do purchase a store apple I go with the Granny Smith.
Royal Oak Orchard also has a very small petting zoo and play area for kids. There must have been 20 school buses that showed up around lunch time and we found out, by accident, that there is a school tour program for $6.50. It includes a short video on apples, bees, pollination, etc. Our kids wanted to go into the teepee and watch a video so we said go ahead. While we were outside the kids in the teepee exited the back and headed for the tractor drawn wagon. The teachers and parents with the kids just assumed our kids were with them and shepherded them onto the wagon and gave them a small bag to pick apples. Our kids were happy to go along, so they did. Melissa and I went running over and pulled our kids off the wagon. Once we found out that we could actually go, we purchased tickets and went on the tour.
We also picked up a couple pumpkins and had lunch before heading back to the hotel.
While we were in Lake Geneva we stayed at the Timber Ridge Lodge. It has an indoor water park that is perfect for our kids (5 and 3) and is the only reason we stay there. The rooms are acceptable, the food passible, the staff grumpy and the building slightly run down although clean. It would probably get a 2 star rating, but the water park allows us to overlook a lot. We saved a couple bucks this year by utilizing the full kitchen in the room and eating our breakfast and one dinner in our room. We’ll be going back for at least a few more years.
As I type this, Melissa has just finished up making apple ice cream. I also have three quarts of apples canned and ready for storage. Leaves probably 90lbs of apples to still deal with. 1/2 bushel is hanging up in the garage for long term storage. I’ve never done that before so we’ll see how that goes. Unfortunately I have to head out to California for 4 days for my day job. I hope they last long enough for me to get back and do something with them!