Fall Harvest Orchard

On our way out to South Dakota we stopped at Fall Harvest Orchard We've never visited here before, but our road trip was a great chance for it and this one did not disappoint!  We started at the jump pillow then moved on to the corn pit.

I think I mentioned last year that Parker started calling corn pits "October" last year.  He started asking about "October" again this year and I new exactly was he meant this time.  This is a much smaller one than our typical patch, but still fun and it scratched his itch.

They had a large jungle gym that Esme enjoyed.

We grabbed some sprinkle mini donuts for a mid-morning snack.

Parker loved these pedal carts and was able to take a bunch of laps because it wasn't too busy.

This was the first time we got to interact with animals at an orchard.  They had grain and apples available to feed goats, pigs, and cows.

Parker even fed a cow!

Giant chair, train ride, culvert pipe horse, and apple spinner finished rounded out our visit and we finished at the giant slide!

It was a bit of a drive from home, but well worth it and we may come back again next year!

Beyond 100 Parks - Foundation Plaza - Watertown, SD

We stopped at this park to burn some time before the wedding.  It looks like there is also a splash pad available during the summer, but I can't judge it on that.

They did have a big climbing structure.  Parker doesn't have much interest in these anymore and I feel like this journey is finally winding down, but I really want to get to 150 before quitting.

He did really like this wheelchair accessible/zero entry merry go round thing.  Very cool!

I am giving this a generous 7.  It would likely get higher in the summer with the splash pad open, but it just doesn't have what my kids like right now.

Beyond 100 Parks - Veterans Memorial Park - Silver Lake, MN

Key Features

We stopped at this park on our road trip out to South Dakota for our friend Rick's wedding to Heidi.  After the pumpkin patch (post to come) we made this our lunch stop for the day.

Not a whole lot to keep them occupied on this one.

Parker loves a good old school merry-go-round and this picture is so him!

No gymnastics bars, but Esme enjoyed the monkey variety and working on her strength.

6 swings, adequate.

A Power Outage Worth Mentioning

You may recall our torrid history with power outages at our old house.  This was one thing we were not going to miss about moving.  I even started a list of outages to keep a record of it.  We've average about 1 per year, but none longer than a couple hours.  The streak finally ended on Tuesday.  Most of the house woke up about 1:15am when it went out.  I pretty quickly reported it to our power company, queued up some iPad white noise and tried to get back to sleep.

I was up and down for the next couple hours checking for updates.  About 4:30 I heard the first chainsaw noises and was able to determine a large part of a neighbor's tree had taken out the line.  We didn't have any storms overnight, but it was very windy.  I was already planning to pack up our food and take it to my parent's house if it wasn't back up in 4 hours and this solidified my decision.

Esme was a little worried I took all the food away, but eventually found it fun to eat by candlelight.  This was the first major outage she's experienced so it was all new.  I ran out and grabbed McDonald's breakfast for Parker before getting Esme on the bus and heading in to the office to work.  The power was back by about 10am and the internet a few hours later.  We all took a trip out to Grandpa and Nana's house to eat dinner and pick up our food.  Parker was a great helper bringing in the trash can.

We stopped for treats at the local gas station before heading home.

Here are some pictures of the aftermath.  It took a couple days for the low hanging internet wire to be repaired.

Quite the tree, and this was only 1/3 of it.  I am guessing they will have the rest of the tree removed since it would fall on the house if anything more happened.