Center Grove Orchard

 Our plan was to head out to Center Grove Orchard on a Saturday, but due to COVID, you needed to buy advanced tickets and that Saturday had sold out.

Thankfully, we were able to go on Sunday, October 11, instead since our church was online, we were able to watch church later and go to the orchard right when it opened at 9:00. We were there until about 12:30 and then we got hungry for lunch. We stopped at Culver's in Ankeny for a later lunch around 1:00.

The apple orchard was closed (probably due to damaged apples from the derecho earlier in the year) but we were able to go gourd picking in the field, instead! We also were able to see the sunflowers still in bloom, which we didn't see last year, either.

Ledges State Park

On Thursday, October 1, our plan was to go up and visit family and meet our new nephew!

But due to COVID and being stuck in quarantine, we were not able to!

I decided to take the girls to Ledges State Park near Madrid/Ames area.

We had never been there before and we had all the time in the world.

Being outside, we didn't to worry about masks or social distancing -

we hardly saw anyone on a Thursday morning/afternoon!

We packed our lunch in the car and ate it in between hiking and exploring.

I was slightly worried about my sense of direction,

so we did a few shorter hikes where we hiked for 20 minutes in one direction

and then came back, so we didn't get lost!

We did the Crow's Nest hike and Table Rock hikes - pretty fall views! 

We stopped and did a quick drive through of the Neil Smith Wildlife Refuge

near Prairie City to see the buffalo on the way home!