The weekend in America's Heartland

Being from the East Coast and having lived on the West Coast, I'm now supplementing that geographic knowledge with occasional work trips to the Midwest (home of benevolent company J's headquarters). There is a large group of us in town for two weeks for a work project, which required us to be here for a weekend. Many groups are doing many different things; some are heading to the shopping malls, others are taking flights to cities such as New York City, but our small group of colleagues decided to stay local.

Our 'local' colleague (a Canadian who is based here full-time) put together an itinerary for us that included an 'art walk', a local diner, and apple picking. However, we quickly discovered that 80 degree temps on a weekend here brought out the entire state for apple picking, so we went off the beaten path. We looked for 'local attractions' in the GPS and found a winery 30 minutes away and off we went. It was the best decision as it was small and absolutely delightful:

It was a tiny place that specializes in apples, but they also had pumpkins for sale, along with plenty of apples. As we don't really have pumpkins in the UK (even though Halloween seems to be imported more heavily each year), I was most pleased to be able to take this photo.

As it was a working winery, they offered 5 free tastes of their wares, then it was possible to buy there the various local items then. They had all sorts of apple wines, liquers and ciders as well as different varieties of non-alcoholic apple juices for tasting. All in all a most pleasant Saturday.