I grew up in Illinois. To my knowledge, Illinois isn’t known for being great apple country. But in Illinois there were these wonderful orchards that you could go to with your whole family, and even if you couldn’t actually *pick* apples yourself you could do other fun things like corn mazes (Ok, so Illinois IS known for corn), or taste cider, or buy apple butter, and just have a nice ‘countryesque’ little family fruit forray.
Now, Washington is known for being ‘apple country’ so husband and I didn’t think it would be all that crazy to go to some places where we’ve seen big signs that say, “APPLES!” on inviting looking barns and expect said places to be fun orchardy type places similar to those found in Illinois.
Not so much… We drove probably 100 miles yesterday and stopped everywhere that we saw the word ‘Apples.’ We found a neat little ‘honor-system’ stand that sold apples and cider and you just poked money into a little hole to pay for it. We found tons of road-side produce stands with berries (which we have plenty of believe me), but we did not find this ‘countryesque’ experience type of orchard for our family to go play in.
The one APPLE barn, which was our ultimate destination, and which has the word ‘APPLES’ printed on it in six foot letters had 1 small cooler with cider, and two stands of apples–with only two varieties of apples. Defeated, we purchased some cider, and a bag of said apples and went on our way back home.
So how bout them apples, my friends? As I say to my husband when he asks me that question, “Sour and wormy… Sour and wormy.”
(To be fair–our actual apples aren’t wormy. But they ARE sour).
