Day Trip to Julian

During the last half of September, Daniel was able to take 2 weeks off from work since he had a bunch of leave he was about to lose at the end of the fiscal year. Needless to say, we were very happy to spend more family time together, especially since he had been traveling so much the 2 months prior, spending 3 weeks in Virginia for training and almost a month in India for an exercise. Most of the time he was off, we tried to strike a balance between relaxing at home and being productive by doing errands and such. However, we did make one day trip to the town of Julian, which is about an hour and a half east of San Diego. Located in the Cuyamaca mountains, it is known for its apples orchards and thus delicious apples pies as well as a place for southern Californians to get away and experience a little bit of autumn. It often gets quite crowded on fall weekends, so we decided to visit on Tuesday, September 27th, since Daniel was off that week.

With October right around the corner, we were hoping for some nice autumn weather up in the mountains and maybe even some beautiful fall leaves... it ended up we didn't get lucky in either of those categories... it was over 80 degrees up there that day and not a single leaf had turned colors yet. Oh well! Since we arrived a little before noon, our first order of business was to have some lunch. After swinging by a few different cafes, we decided to eat at the Apple Alley Bakery. Lunch was pretty good, but the best part was the piece of apple pie with vanilla ice cream that we split at the end... yum! Even Ry was spying the pies in the window afterwards :) Following lunch, we walked up and down Main Street checking out the shops at a leisurely pace.

Traveling with a baby is definitely a new experience, and we are learning to be flexible, that is for sure. In the midst of shopping, we realized Ryland had had an "accident"... which means whether we were done looking around or not, it was time to head back to the car! Once Ry had a new outfit on and a full stomach, we headed out to go apple picking, but not before picking up a famous Julian apple pie to take home.

Soon we found ourselves at the Raven Hill Orchard, where we picked a bunch of Empire, Jonathan, and Gala apples. Even Ryland got in on the picking action... with our help of course :) With our bag full and the afternoon heat getting to us a bit, we decided to hit the road. Once we got home, we noticed that it was much cooler near the coast and even the leaves were starting to turn here too... how ironic. Yet our visit to Julian was a good one, and we took home some nice "souvenirs" too... fresh apples and a scrumptious apple pie, which were so tasty that they were definitely worth the trip!