The Downtown Ithaca Alliance hosted the 28th Annual Downtown Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival this past weekend on the Commons, bringing together Ithacans, tourists and students to enjoy various apple-related activities, as well as to ring in the fall season. 

This year’s Apple Harvest Festival transformed downtown Ithaca into one giant stage for local artists eager to showcase their respective creative disciplines. From hypnotists to the amazing acrobats of the iCircus to street musicians with open guitar cases filled with all the Ithacan population’s loose change and single-dollar bills, performers lined the streets and brightened the atmosphere with a vivid stratum of sound and color.

While scrolling through my super cool 161 things spreadsheet in a bout of procrastination at the library last week, I noticed #22: Pick apples at the Cornell Orchards. I immediately abandoned my reading and invited myself on the apple-picking outing my friends had planned for that afternoon.

Twenty minutes into the car ride, I wondered aloud why the Cornell Apple Orchards were so far away from the actual Cornell Campus. Everyone turned around to stare at me. Apparently, this had always been intended as a trip to non-Cornell owned orchards. Oh well. I’m still crossing it off the list because I did go apple picking and I’m not above cheating to complete all of the 161 things.