2024 Fall Foliage Trip to New York - Bowman Orchards - 2024/10/02

It's Fall and Jacob and the Flowers' family have all headed up to New York to celebrate the fall foliage! One way to get into the fall spirit is to go to an apple orchard! There's one along the way and we've actually been to it before during our first year of RVing! We parked the RV in their lot, as they were a Harvest Host. It's Bowman Orchards! 

Oh yes. I remember this driveway. When we came here the first time, it was "pay to enter" and they had people manning this entrance. They tried to send me down the right lane with my truck and huge RV behind it. Yeah, no. 

This year, they've changed their business model and it's free to enter. 

Going down this driveway to the parking lot. 

I remember this part made me nervous too. Trying to squeeze the RV between the house and the tree/sign pole. 

Once we parked, it was time to go explore! 

We could smell the donuts cooking at the bakery house. Let's start there! 

Mmm. It smells good in here. There's donuts cooking in the back room and lots of pies and pastries out. We'll be back later. Let's keep exploring. 

The giant Adirondack chair is still here. I remember when the kids were littler sitting in it the same way. 

(From 2021)

And right behind the chair are lots of animals. Goats, pigs, and even rabbits. 

Just chilling and watching us. 

T thought this goat looking like a goat/cow mashup. 

Hi bunny! 

Last time the kids had a great time playing on the playground. Ian climbing on the tires. 

(from 2021)

And playing on the swings. The pigs are a little smelly, and the odor was very strong, blowing into the playground. 

Swinging. 

(from 2021)

And we even found the pink tricycle Alli road before. 

(from 2021)

Definitely have to try to have a Mario Kart race! 

(from 2021)

Except the years have not been kind to the #7 go kart. Along with a busted tire, the chain has completely slipped off the pedal gears. Instead the best we could do was push it around the playground. 

What else can we see? 

The pumpkin patch this year. 

And lots of pretty flowers for sale. 

Let's go see the Country Store. 

Inside there's all sorts of things for sale. We found maple sugar candies for 2-3x more than our friends the Coutures sell theirs for. Fudge and other chocolates were now $20 a pound! I think we're starting to get priced out. 

Into the walk-in fridge! 

There's other fruits and veggies for sale. Brussel Sprouts still on the stalk? 

And a whole bunch of pre-picked apples. $2.50 a pound back here for these apples. 

But we're not here to get apples someone else has already picked! We want to choose our own apples! Directly from the tree! Let's go over to the u-pick section! 

The U-Pick rules say "Free Entrance in 2024!" but there's a caveat. Everyone has to buy an appropriately sized bag to enter. A Peck is $21 (2 people), and a half bushel is $35 (4 people) or 2 for $55. With 5 of us, guess we're getting 2 half bushel bags. 

To take us back into the orchards, we get to ride on a trolley! 

Excited to go pick some apples! 

There's lots of different rows. 

And wow! Look at all the different varieties that are available to pick today! 19! Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Apple Taste Test for sure! 

Our previous biggest apple taste test had 11 different varieties of apples. Let's beat that today! 

We're on a mission to find all the different types! 

Starting with Golden Delicious! 

Those are some big apples. 

Searching through all the different rows to find the best. 

The rows and trees here are specially marked with ribbons. If you're caught picking apples that aren't on the list for the day, you'll be paying $10 a pound for them! 

It's on the list! It's got a ribbon! Pick it! 

Crazy how many apples are all over the ground here. I suppose it's no surprise though. These apples are ripe and ready to pick, falling off into our hand as soon as we touch them. 

No kids are allowed on the ladders, but I think we can still figure out a way to get them up high. 

Got it! 

And there's a few more at normal height too. 

Perfect! The orchard is smelling quite appley and sweet! 

Alli taking her turn picking the ones up high. 

As we went along we checked off the different apples from the list. We had originally brought small ziplock bags to separate each apple variety into, but I had no idea we'd have 19! Even Theresa doesn't carry that many ziplock bags around. Instead the Sharpie that was going to mark the bags, instead marked the bottom of each apple. 

Looks tasty!

We're almost done finding all of them! 

Oh boy. Here's where we're really gonna score. From previous visits to New York, one of the newest cultivars of apples, the SnapDragon, was our very favorite. We're fortunate enough that our Aldi down in Florida happens to carry them too. 

Theresa might have let slip that she planned this trip around 2 things. When the leaves would be changing colors, and when the SnapDragons would be in season! Of those 2 half bushel bags, we filled one entirely with SnapDragon apples! 

We're not the only ones who enjoy the apples either. 

Yummy! Bet their honey tastes good too!

Actually scratch that. These are Yellow Jackets and they do not make honey. 

It would have been super helpful to have a map of the rows as we hunted down the last apples. The sheet gave us the rows each apple could be found on, but not where that row was in relation to everything else. Section C is right next to E, and N jumps straight over to R. A quick search on their website would have resulted in us finding the orchard map, but it was a fun challenge to search for everything, and we were thrilled when we got all 19! 

And there we are! The hotel scale told us that we came away with 44 pounds of apples! That's only $1.25 a pound! Now how many can we eat during the next few days here? 

Once we got to the hotel, Theresa pulled out all the apples and separated them. She looked like a kid playing with her toys on the floor. We'll be putting these into the mini-fridge (who needs drinks) because apples that are stored cold last 10x longer than room temperature. For the apples that didn't fit into the fridge, we found that they gave the room an amazing apple perfume every time we came back to the room. 

Today has been fun, but tomorrow we're headed north to see the leaves changing colors!