Taking advantage of every nice weekend we can; we headed up to Weston Bend State Park for some hiking. We’d been told that leaf peeping (yes, it’s a thing) there was really good so we were excited that we had a free weekend that lined up with the changing leaves.

It also happened to be the last weekend that the public could tour the Sallie House in Atchison. We had wanted to go to the Sallie House last October but were really busy training for a marathon so we were glad of the chance to go this year. The Sallie House is a supposedly haunted house. It’s said to be haunted by the ghost of a little girl, Sallie, that died during a botched surgery sometime around 1905. The owner of the house at the time was a doctor that practiced out of the front rooms of his house. It is believed that the little girl had appendicitis, leading to her needing an operation.

Our tour time slot for the Sallie House was 1pm to 3pm so we went to Weston Bend State Park in the morning and hiked along the ridge route. Everyone else seemed to have a similar idea and the park was surprisingly crowded. It was early in the leaf turning cycle but really gorgeous.

We had trouble finding a place to eat lunch; small towns are not the most vegetarian friendly. Leavenworth was the closest place with any decent options. Fortunately, we found a neat place located in an old train depot. They had okay veggie burgers, but had local beer and we even received complimentary “donut muffins”. Yes, they exist and yes it was also our first time trying them. They were surprisingly buttery.

After lunch we headed up to Atchison to pick up our tickets from the visitors center, then drove to the Sallie House. It was about a block away from Amelie Earhart’s birthplace (we’ll come back for that tour someday). Walking up to the Sallie House, there was nothing extraordinary about it. The furniture looked exactly like what Kaila’s grandmother’s house had; white wicker and muted floral patterns, and there was a plethora of children’s toys spanning the century. The stairs to the cellar looked creepy but they were roped off. Kirk took a video of the upstairs and nothing weird showed up on it. Color us disappointed.

Wine tasting has been on our summer/fall adventure list, so we headed back to Weston to taste some local wine and walk around the quaint, yet crowded downtown street. We came in thirsty, tasted five different wines, and came out with three bottles. It was a wonderful use of one of the last nice weather windows we’ll probably get in the Midwest!