Apple Pickin'.

This is one of the scenes we found in town. We were happy to see Mr. Skeleton found himself a gal.

We named this cute little guy Rufus - he's the keeper of the grape vines.

The girls had Columbus Day off from school so we drove up to Charlottesville Carter Mountain Apple Orchard. We intended to pick Braeburn and Red Delicious apples. But once we arrived at the information counter, we found that most of the trees had already been picked clean. The only apples left were Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and Fuji. We ended up going for the Fuji apples upon recommendation from the information guy. As we were picking, we determined that we might want to taste these apples since we've never had Fuji apples before. The three of us shared an apple and found them to be VERY good. We picked eight pounds of apples - a full bag. Before we left the mountain, we bought a half dozen apple cider donuts. I really wish we would have tasted the donuts before we left because they are so melt-in-your-mouth-good that we should have purchased more. After the beautiful drive back down the mountain, we stopped at Michie Tavern to check out a few of the buildings we weren't able to get to last time we were in Charlottesville. In the Blacksmith Shop we found some Civil War ammunition and were told a neat story about how the soldiers wrote letters using the ammunition since it was made from lead and was easier to use than quill and ink. I wrote a little more about the story here. Before we headed home we drove through the historic older part of town and were struck at the beauty of the older buildings and the charm of the "little" town. Several times throughout the day the girls said "What a fun day this was".