non-existent apples, cheese, a pal named Craig, hungry goats, and nipping raccoons - what a weekend!

This past Friday Ben and I along with some friends from med school went on a camping trip near Wisconsin. The trees are starting to change colors so it was a perfect time to go. Our first day we set out to an apple orchard to pick our own fruit and found out that the weekend before it had been picked clean.. niiiice... luckily this orchard had a few other incentives to come like their homemade apple cider that they taught and showed us how to make, frightening farm animals, and a Wisconsin cheese store - perfect. Afterwards we headed to a corn maze and realized once we were inside of this corn maze that 8 20-something year olds had to liven things up in a corn maze to make it fun. So we split up the map and had a race. Of course Ben and I won (we sprinted the entire time - thank heavens I work out at the gym). I love living in a big city like Chicago but I also love that we can drive an hour away and be out in the middle of nowhere.

This is my pal Craig. He was our cheese cutter. He gave us an abundance of information on the different types of cheeses and let us sample and sample and sample... what a pal. He even let me climb back behind the cheese counter for a photo op.

This pretty much sums up our feelings about Wisconsin cheese.

With my friend Craig again. 

These may look like harmless goats but they were vicious. They would stick their heads through the fencing and nip at everything. Here I was trying to take just a lovely picture with my pastoral friends and they kept nibbling at my hair.. ew..

This was right after we kicked tushy in the corn maze - we are way too competitive.

One of our friends never made it to station 14. We waited and waited and finally left this note telling him we were headed back home to the campsite. We later found out he had given up...loser...

After our full day of apple orchard, corn maze competitions, and nipping goats we settled back into our campground for a bevy of cheeses. All eight of us sat around this dairy buffet and gorged ourselves.. most of us took naps after that.

The nights were chilly. We probably burned an entire tree in the two days we were there. Here we were warming our fannies by the coals before we headed to bed. That same night one of Ben's friends woke up screaming (he was sleeping outside) because a raccoon started attacking his feet trying to see if he had anything in his sleeping bag to eat. AAAAHHHH!