A 36.78 Pounder

Saturday was a glorious autumn day here in Charlottesville. Luckily there weren't any sick people at the hospital so Rojelio had the day off.

We went on an old adventure, but at a new place. We usually called them cider mills in Michigan, here in Virginia this was just a plain old orchard. The two names could be synonyms if it weren't for the whole production of cider aspect. Carter Mountian Orchard. The name explains it all. The orchard is perched on the very top of a mountain over looking Charlottesville. The view was astounding. It was even more incredible to see how small downtown Charlottesville really is; especially when comparing it to our previous city of Grand Rapids. The biggest building in town seems to be the white one in the middle of the picture . . . which is actually the hospital.

As tradition goes we had to have cider and doughnuts. FRESH HOT doughnuts right off the . . . oil!?

Here's the view from the doughnut cam.

After we indulged, Rojelio spotted a few people carrying long poles with small cages on one end. Interesting. We stalked these carriers and found their destination was the apple picking check-in booth. As soon as those poles were brought back other consumers seized them. It didn't take long for us to figure out these poles were a hot item and hard to come by.

We were up for the challenge. We decided to hang out and shark our prey. Rojelio spotted him. An eight-year-old boy. The pole was bigger than he was. What an easy target. As the boy neared the check-in counter Rojelio swam in his current, being careful not to trip over the pole drowning in the dirt as the boy dragged it behind. SNATCH! A successful hunt.

Now that we had a pole and bag for our apples we were ready to hit the orchard.Yeah sure there were some apples within an arms reach, but what's the fun in that. We were so eager to have a pole to use; that was the primary reason we went out in the orchard. We got to try our hand at pole-picking.

This was a state-of-the-art facility, a doughnut AND pole cam. Who could believe it!?

For the grand finale, Rojelio walked away with a 36.78 lb pumpkin.

What do you call an over-weight pumpkin?

A plumpkin.

We had a doughnut-eatin', cider-drinkin', pole-pickin', pumpkin-haulin' good time!