St. Jo, MI

Well we took somewhat of an impromptu visit to St. Jo this past weekend. A week ago, Brandon brought up that we have a ton of hotel points, so lets get away (the 4 of us) for the weekend and he suggested St. Jo, MI. He'd seen an advertisement and away we went.

We left on Saturday, Oct 10th. Of course, before we'd left, we had done research and decided that we would head up to Jollay Orchards & do some fruit pickin. That morning, Brandon took the dogs to Petsmart hotel so they would be well taken care of while we were gone. Loaded up the car, put the address into the GPS and headed out. We noticed our directions kept changing and what was supposed to have been a 2 hr trip, ended up being almost 4 hrs. LOL Was starting to feel a little like Gilligan's island. The drive was the scenic route & it was some of the most beautiful scenery i've ever seen. The trees lining the Indiana, Michigan border were just incredible. I would like to say that they were red, purple, green, orange & yellow (which they were) but just saying the colors doesn't even begin to explain it the absolute majestic beauty.

Went out to lunch when we first got up there and then headed over to the Orchards. It was so stinkin cold out & we just kep hoping that it wasn't going to rain on our fun. As soon as we got to the farm, we realized that we had left our camera at home and only had our cameras on our phones. (BOOO!!!!)

We took a hayride to the apple trees, spent about an hr picking different types of apples. Then took the hayride around the rest of the farm. We really want to go back in July-there will be about 6 different fruits to pick and we can go to the beach afterwards. I think we spent about 2.5 or 3 hrs at the farm. After picking apples & hayrides, we fed the goats and sheep, played on the play area & took pictures.

Afterwards, we headed a mile down the road to Grandpa's Cider Mill where they made fresh cider. Of course, what's a trip to the cider mill w/out getting cider & apple cider doughnuts? We then finished off by going to the Chocolate garden. Of course, we expected this fabulout place where everything was made of or for chocolate. Really, it was just over-priced (but delicious) chocolate truffles.

Sunday, we made our way home. Stopped at an outlet mall that was in the area and then took a direct route home. Not as pretty, but much much shorter.