It’s Fall in the Inland Northwest, and for those of us who live here, Fall equals a trip to Green Bluff. Green Bluff is the ultimate farming and produce area for Spokane. There are multiple farms that transform into Autumn Paradises every year, featuring everything from corn mazes to pumpkin donuts and u-pick fruit. In short, it’s amazing and a not-to-be-missed Fall tradition.
It’s also insanely packed with people every year.
Which is why my husband and I decided to change things up a bit this year. As much as I am a creature of habit and lover of traditions, I also recognize that there can be times when it’s important to make things fresh.
A couple of weeks ago, before the weather changed, I’d tentatively made plans with my youngest to head to Green Bluff to enjoy all the fall things and get some lovely end-of-season produce. When that Saturday morning rolled around, we both realized that her homework load was more than a day at Green Bluff was going to allow, so my husband and I were on to Plan B.
As we weighed our options, we thought through the crowds of people and cars we would have to navigate and realized that neither one of us was all that excited about the stress we would encouter. We decided to forego the annual Pumpkin Patch trip (and the subsequent cutesy pictures that would accompany it) and mix up our tradition.
Instead of heading to Greenbluff, we decided to take a drive South of Spokane to a small town called Rockford. We didn’t discover any pumpkin patches along the way, but we found a lively and fun little mercantile called Hurd’s Mercantile, and we also stopped in at the Golden Gem Mercantile, where we grabbed coffee and picked up a couple of pounds of coffee to take home. (I still didn’t take any cutesy pictures).
It ended up being just what we needed.
The moral of the story? It’s more than ok to be flexible with our traditions when the old ones aren’t working for us anymore. In fact, I recommend changing things up once in a while, even if things are working, just so the routine doesn’t get stale. Take a different route to work, or get coffee from a new place (gasp!). You just might find something joyful and lovely along the way.
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Rebecca Meek 