They're not exactly Alaskan-sized, but I'm impressed nonetheless. As it turns out, Alldredge is more known for their you-pick orchards, peach and apple, than their pumpkins. I would have liked to have taken the girls to go pick some apples, since we'd recently read a book about the fruit, but in this, I doubt my mothering powers would have reached so far. So they contented themselves with playing in the playhouse; swinging on the swing set; having a picnic lunch; a hay ride; and chasing the for-adoption kittens.One of the things about Missouri and Kansas that I appreciate is the relative ease of getting out of town into the country. While we were riding the tractor-pulled hay wagon, you could almost imagine yourself hours and hours outside of city limits, but in reality, you wouldn't have to look hard to see Kansas City's major airport just across the interstate. And driving along KC's beltway, there are large swathes in the northern half that make you feel like you're back out in the middle of nowhere. It can seem a little desolate, but the land here is not like in Wyoming, so it feels as if it has more potential.
We met some of our friends there, e.g. Jude and Mary: you might recognize them from other photos.
* Some friends had invited Drew to the BeerFest some weeks back, and happily an extra free ticket materialized for him. So I dropped him off at the Legends parking garage a little before the beginning of the event, on our way to the orchard, and picked him up on the way back. He said they gave him a wrist band, a little glass, and from there he lost track of what he drank: he guess-timates there were over 400 different kinds of beer there: he'd had a list five pages long. And his friends, who'd been to other beer fests elsewhere, brought him a pretzel necklace to wear and munch.
