Apple Picking without Apples is just well...hiking.

We had our first taste of Fall weather here in Southern California. 100 degrees yesterday turned into a beautiful blue sky windy Fall 60 degree day today. After soccer this morning we examined the calendar and decided that after today then the next available day to go apple picking in the higher elevations of the San Bernardino National Forest mountains would be closer to Halloween and by then it's chilly up there and uncomfortable for us thin blooded valley dwellers.

We drove up to Oak Glen at lunchtime. The 103 year old Los Rios Rancho "apple ranch" is part of the Oak Glen Preserve. We have visited there every Fall for the last 3 years. Last month Oak Glen suffered from some large wild land fires and we were relived to see that the firefighters managed to hold the firelines and all of the orchards remained intact. Some of the orchards and historical lands were just a few feet from the firelines with merely 10 feet of road separating the burn areas from the orchards.

When we arrived at Los Rios Rancho the kids were excited, should we do what we did last year, should we try new patches, what kinds of apples would we pick, who was going to be the first to take a bite of an apple straight off the tree? Frowns appeared when we found out that there were no apples available for picking. We were shocked. apparently there had been a bad Spring and the apple crops were down this year. The u-pick harvesting was done over a month ago. Shocking, normally we come 3 weeks later and there's a huge crop of apples.

Oh well, we're still here to enjoy the day. We bought some fresh bagged apples, caramel apples and apple cider. We walked through the orchard trail taking pictures, being silly, exploring nature. We took a walk in a trail of native California trees. The kids were interested to see that all these years we'd always focused on the apples and never realized that there were California Giant Redwood Sequoia trees and other redwoods and mahogany's and trees that are native to Oak Glen itself. What a learning experience to touch these trees and hike along the path.

We found an old barn and we even climbed an apple tree. We spent a few hours just frolicking in the preserve and when we were done and walking back to the car Quentin turned and said "Thanks mom and dad, that was fun". What a wonderful 3 year old boy he is.