The leaves are starting to turn and the air has a hint of crispness. We’ve put together an autumn afternoon that takes full advantage of this beautiful season in Southeast Missouri!

A 20 minute drive from Cape Girardeau brings you to Knowlan Family Farm, located right on Highway 34 in Burfordville, Missouri. This cozy spot welcomes you with a big front porch leading into the farm store, where you can pick up freshly pressed apple cider and local fruits and vegetables. Walk through to the back where the kiddos can draw with provided sidewalk chalk while you wait a few moments for the tractor drawing a trailer to pull up. Hop aboard and enjoy the short ride into the orchard.

You can step off at this week’s ready-to-pick fruit, or keep riding to the pumpkin patch tucked in a field ringed by trees with pumpkins of all shapes and sizes to choose from. In the orchard, rows of apple trees are neatly marked with wooden signs noting the variety; the orchard has over two dozen different varieties of apples, including hard to find in the Midwest Cortlands and delectably-named Winesaps, Candy Crisps, Snow Sweets and Honeycrisps. A friendly Knowlan family member is waiting for you in the orchard with a description of the day’s ripe apple varieties and what to look for as you pick, as well as bags to hold your pickings. (Knowlan Family Farm’s Facebook page does an excellent job of posting what’s available at the farm daily; it’s a great spot to check if you have your heart set on a certain variety.)

The trees have plenty of low branches perfect for young ones, and long rows of apple trees provide plenty of shady space to wander the orchard, filling your bags with all the apples you can pick. The tractor will pick you back up and drop you at the farm store, where you can settle up and head just minutes down Highway 34 to Bollinger Mill State Historic Site and Covered Bridge.

The grounds of this state historic site are immaculate and make for a picture perfect picnic on the banks of the Whitewater River. Walk across the covered bridge – one of only four left statewide – and step inside the mill, where you can see the milling apparatus and the first floor at no charge. Tours of the upper floors of the mill are $5 and are well worth it. Take a short hike through the forest to the Bollinger Family Cemetery; the trees surrounding Bollinger Mill are typically brilliant in the Fall (find out when colors are peaking using this handy tool).

An autumn afternoon at Knowlan Family Farm and Bollinger Mill State Historic Site might just make you feel like a kid again, you’ll be having so much fun!

Enjoy Fall in Cape Girardeau – here’s the very best of the Great Outdoors in our river city. Share your adventure using #VisitCape.