They went to their first of THREE pumpkin farms that week.
Meades vs. Kilpses. The Meades were the winners.
Then it was all six kids against Uncle Tim. He held them pretty good at first, but ultimately the kids had that victory.
Graydon at the bottom of a 200 ft. slide. He lost his hat each time he went down.
This slide was probably the most popular attraction at the farm. I even went down once!
On Monday morning, the kids and I travelled down to my parents house and Andy joined us that evening. The following morning, after a breakfast at Denny's, we said goodbye to our kids and Andy and I made our way up to Door County. We didn't really have any agenda for our time away, so we just did whatever we saw that looked fun. Our first stop was apple picking. Honey Crisp apples are our favorite!
We picked a lot of them!
We drove a little more and stopped at Door Peninsula Winery. In addition to wine tasting, they had tastings for different oils, vinegars, butters, and spreads. It made for a nice snack!
We walked through some shops and grabbed an early dinner at a BBQ place and then made our way to our bed and breakfast. We stayed at the same BnB that we stayed at on our honeymoon 15 years ago. I kept a little ad from back then and found it tucked our honeymoon photo album. This is what it looked like back then.
The BnB was known as The Barbican back then. Now it's The Diplomat. We stayed in the room featured in the ad. It was known as Emily's Room. Here we are 15 years ago!
This is that same room today. It is now called The Ambassador suite. This is the view from the hallway. They switched the wall that the bed is on.
This is the closest angle I have to the shot from the ad above.
I took several photos of the room this time so that I could remember it. It felt so neat to be back in the same place. And I think I could have been content to never leave this room. I loved it.
The area outside was our own private patio.
Here is the bathroom. I didn't take pictures of the shower, but it was luxurious and took up that whole space behind the vanity/sink wall.
One of my favorite parts was breakfast delivered in a basket to our door. We've been to another bed and breakfast that has you come down to the dining room to eat. I much prefer eating in our room.
The first morning, we had a mexican frittata, blueberry muffins, bananas and yogurt, coffee, and apple cider. Everything was so good.
When we ventured out, we found lots of pretty scenes to take in.
During our previous visits to Door County, we never made it up to Washington Island - the area above the tip of Door County. This time we did. We boarded our car on the ferry and headed over around lunch time.
Unfortunately, lots of businesses on this island were already closed for the season. It wasn't until after 3pm before we found a place open to eat! While searching for food, we stopped at some areas along the way. Schoolhouse Beach came recommended. "You'll want to see the white rock." As we approached the beach, we were looking for a big, white rock. After not seeing anything like that for a while, it eventually dawned on us that they were using rock as a plural word. There were a lot of white rockS!
These rocks are actually pretty special. They come natural to that area. There is no sand on this beach and no pebbles. Just these smooth, flat, white rocks. Only the area is starting to shrink because people take the rocks as souvenirs. They actually had signs posted that anyone caught taking rocks would be fined $250.
So instead of taking them, several visitors to the area do artistic things with the rocks and take pictures of their creations.
Confessions time: when we stumbled upon these rocks, it actually read "H+K" above the heart. Andy just moved a few rocks and we had our own little love letter. :)
These were some pretty cool trees.
A lot of them were bent in different places. This one made a nice place to sit.
Meanwhile, the kids were having fun with my parents. One of their activities was bowling! My mom sent us pics while we were away.
After our lunch on the island, we headed back to the mainland. By this point, it was about 4:30pm. Our original plan was to go out for a nice dinner that evening, but because of our late lunch, we weren't hungry. And we were feeling a little worn out from our adventures so, instead of a fancy dinner, we ordered a pizza, grabbed a movie ("Hidden Figures"), and went back to our room.
The next morning, more breakfast delivered to our door!
We had to check out by 11am, which was kind of sad. But we still had a whole day in Door County ahead of us. Andy wanted to take a little bit of time to meet up with another pastor in the area and I had some school reading to do, so while he did that, I spent my time in a cute little coffee shop.
Later that afternoon, we went on a scenic trolley ride - mainly through Peninsula State Park.
While we were looking at pretty things, the kids went to another pumpkin farm with my parents. More grandma pics!
A quick trip through a haunted house.
Andy and I saved our nice dinner for that evening and when we were finished, it was time to make the three-hour drive back to my parents' house.
The next morning, we went out to breakfast and went to another pumpkin farm! This visit was probably more for my benefit than anyone's. Out of all the pumpkin farms I've been to, this one is still my favorite.
The kids each picked out their pumpkins for the season and we are going to carve them this weekend.
We all loved our fall break!
