Andy..... Opie.... Dinnertime!! It's apple pie time.

I kind of have this obsession with small town America. I'm searching desperately for the perfect small rural town. You know, it has a little grocery store, but you can still get fancy cheeses. It has more businesses "up town" than "down town". The algebra teacher has 7 students in her advanced class and most people sleep not only with their door unlocked, but probably standing wide open too.

It also needs to be warm there in the winter.

So that rules out the perfect town (otherwise).
Nebraska City, Nebraska.

I love this place. It feels like 1967 - only without racial unrest. I totally expect Andy and Opie to come around the corner any moment and Aunt Bea following them with a fresh baked cherry pie.

It's also home to Arbor Day Farms so that means the scenery is pretty nice. But what's more important is the wine. Yeah... like.. booze. They make the best Apple wine on the planet and so we decided we'd make the trek there over the weekend to get a couple bottles -which kind of turned into a case of wine.

I feel like such a lush.

My favorite part of Neb City is main street. It's very long - about 6 -7 blocks long and hardly any empty storefronts. Not just chiropractors and insurance salesmen either (apologies to those ppl). It has lots of cute shops like gift shops and antique stores, but it doesn't FEEL like they are catering to tourists.

I think they have caught on, to the feel that they are putting out there as these murals have appeared on the ends of some of their buildings. Old looking advertisements painted right onto the brick.

Arbor Day farms is on the edge of town, and so beautiful.

It doesn't, however, look like the above photo right now. heh. I kind of doctored the fall leaves in because I missed most of it last year.

We hurried to the lodge because the serve really great food there and we wanted to make lunch. However, we didn't plan ahead very well, and had to go 45 miles in the WRONG DIRECTION. There's no place to cross the Missouri river between St. Joseph, Mo, and Omaha.

Really.

That's like a 3 hour drive between those two locations as the crow flies. It took a 1.5 hour trip, and turned it into a 3.25 hour trip.

We still went!
(we really like wine)

I had the bison burger and Gene had the Reuben sandwich. Both were excellent, and I don't even really like reubens!

We hung out, antique shopped, bought a case of wine - which was half filled with their new apple pie wine. (Think flavorful apples with a cinnamon kicker.. mmm... warm).

See you soon Nebraska City. As soon as you figure out that -20 deg in January issue, I'm in.