Fall Weekends

Another beautiful fall weekend in Columbus, and so we went for another hike. We have this book about 50 hikes in Ohio, and this week was our second hike, at Darby Creek MetroPark. It was supposed to be 4 miles and take 3 hours. I definitely agree with the 4 miles, but it took about an hour and a half. There was some hilly moments, but mostly just a nice walk in the woods. It was not a paved path, like most of last weeks walk, but definitely easier to follow. It was an oak and hickory forest, and I'm not sure I saw one maple or beech tree! Of course, with no leaves, I could be mistaken! Once again, it was brisk and windy, but the trees blocked most of the wind, and there was a couple of beautiful views of Darby Creek, and the confluence of the Little Darby and Big Darby Creeks.

I have another orchid starting to bloom, which makes 3 now., with another 8 or so starting bud spikes. People ask me why I like orchids, and this is why. It is gray and November, and here is a group of plants that STARTS to bloom in november, and continues on through the winter! It cheers me up just thinking about it! Here are pictures of what is blooming now!

Great Fall Weekend

Usually I have a quiet weekend at home, getting caught up around the house, but this weekend we were busier, and did some more interesting stuff than usual.

Friday we went to the local high school football game, where I watched my alma mater get beat soundly by the school my kids went to. It wasn't as bad as last year, but still not good. I had mixed feelings, since I had rooted for the kids school for eight years. In the end, I wore my school colors and sat on the home (kids school) side, with mixed feelings, cheering for both teams.

On Saturday, in the mist and drizzle, we took a hike on the Black Hand Gorge Nature Preserve Bike trail. This is a really nice paved bike trail by the Licking River, east of Newark. It was a scenic walk, and actually probably fortunate that most of the leaves were down, if you wanted to see the view. If you wanted to go off the bike path onto the foot path called the Quarry Rim Trail, however, the leaves made the footing a little slick, and to be quite honest, I'm not sure I could have followed the trail without Chris to lead the way, it was so obscured with leaves. But it is definitely a nice hike, and I hope to do it again!

Since we were already east, we drove up north a little and had lunch in Berlin, at an Amish restaurant we hadn't been to before. We were intending to do a little shopping in Amish county, but the afternoon and early evening ended up being a tour of the wineries in the area, and we stopped at four wineries, and tasted at three. Two we had been to before,and knew what to expect, and two were new to us and the last was the best of all. We bought more wine than we can use in the next 6 months or so, which engendered the idea of perhaps having a little street wine and cheese party over the Thanksgiving weekend. We'll see if we can make that happen, with all the other excitement of Thanksgiving weekend.

Sunday we caught up on house things, and Chris really got after the leaves, to the point that I can't even lift the bags the leaves are in. I made some fantastic pumpkin bars, which I was a little nervous about because I replaced half the sugar with splenda to accomodate my fathers dietary needs, but the nervousness was totally unfounded, and they were great!

So today we are back at work, but tonight we will go out to celebrate Chris' birthday, so all in all an extended fun weekend!