Apple Hill......

We took a trip to Apple Hill on Friday...not quite like stepping back in time....there’ve been a lot of changes in the years we’ve been going there...mostly in the highways ‘n housing....lots more people now....bigger, faster highways but just as much congestion in Placerville as ever there was.....the freeway, highway 50, cuts thru Old Hangtown but it ain’t non-stop...two or three stoplights gaurantee that everybody slows down...
all the growth is outside of Placerville, the surrounding area looks like the surrounding areas of every other California community but Placerville itself, Old Hangtown, Old Dry Diggin’s, whatever y'want'a call it....looks much the same...same narrow street running along the bottom of a canyon, same crowded buildings...I didn’t see the hanging man ‘n I don’t know if they still have him there or if they bowed to the pressure of political correctness ‘n removed him...
Apple Hill is still the same narrow, crooked roads...lots of new homes, they seem infected by the same McMansion fever as ev'rywhere else.....more vineyards than ever but, that’s California...if y'got a big enuff yard, plant a vineyard...that bubble'll burst one 'a these days too.....
We stopped at the same places that we usually stop with only a couple exceptions...We skipped Larsen’s ‘n whichever one it is that has the maze....we tasted apples, bought a couple gifts, some fudge at the Fudge Factory next door to High Hill ‘n stopped at Boa Vista to buy a box of apples....Millyrose is busy at this moment cooking apples for apple butter...also, a half-flat of strawberries ‘n a few freestone peaches...
Y’don’t save money by going to Apple Hill...kind’a pricey this year...guess it wasn’t the best year for apples that they’ve ever had but, it’s the trip that counts....forty miles each way on a relatively new divided highway...I was recalling the way it used t’be when we first went there....two-lane blacktop back then ‘n a lot of the back roads were gravel....’Course, Apple Hill was just getting started back then...didn’t have near as many vendors peddling the same stuff that y’find at ev’ry little street fair ‘n festival.....a lot fewer locations back then also...
It was smaller, homier, I guess you’d call it....folks there are still friendly, the apple desserts are still good ‘n the visitors still seem t’be enjoying themselves.....
Autumn is a good time of year.....