Perfect Autumn Weather for Apple Picking and The Zoo

This weekend was simply gorgeous, 62 degrees during the day with mostly sunny, blue skies. We took advantage of the weather while it lasts by going apple picking at Wright's Apple farm on Saturday and a trip to the Bronx Zoo today. Let's start with apple picking.


The drive out there was easy in our zipcar companion, Mowanda, who was a Toyota Matrix. Unlike the Mazda 3, this car was a lot easier to drive and way more comfortable for me even though the size wasn't much different. If possible, I will try to get a Matrix every time. The only annoyance was the seatbelt alarm which does not stop ringing until both passenger's have their seat belts fastened. I suppose that's good though...

It was an 80 mile trip up to Gardener, NY where wright's apple farm was located. The foliage is starting to turn but it's not quite there yet. However, there were still plenty of oranges and reds to look at. We arrived and could immediately smell the apples in the air. There were plenty of pies, cider and donuts to go around. Mmmm, I love that smell and mixed with the bright orange of pumpkins and cool crisp feel of the fall air makes me tingle inside.




We drove up to the vast grove of apples and although they didn't have as much variety as Soon's orchard, this one was much bigger. I liked it a lot better because it was HUGE and it really felt like we were out in the country stealing apples from the neighborhood lot. We paid $8 for each bag which turned out to be loads of apples, one of which I'm crunching on right now. Mmmm, golden delicious is...delicious!



Jumping for an apple


Just getting out into the countryside was worth every penny of the zipcar. The apples were just an extra perk in my view. I felt so relieved and stress-free when out of the city. Ahhh, so nice! One of my favorite shots of the day was of this wide open plain, with apples crates and streaming clouds in the sky (click on it to go to flickr and few a larger size):


One cool thing we saw was sky divers floating down through the clouds. At first there were just a few but then more and more emerged from the thick clouds of above. It was a very cool sight!

A short recap of today (Sunday): we spent the afternoon at the Bronx Zoo for corporate weekend. There are a few weekends out of the year that are free to GS (and other company) employees and it just so happens that I came across this last week. It was very nice not to pay the $14 admission fee for each of us! Here are some shots of the day (the Tiger enclosure was SOO cool. We timed it perfectly with 4:30pm play time)











I tried something new with this batch of photos. I went into photoshop and just applied the most basic of filters. It really cleaned up the colors and makes them look a lot better!

Well I'm off to bed now, better get into my jim jams (just learned that one from the Brits).