If you haven’t spent an Autumn in NE Ohio and are spending your first here, you’re welcome! Crisp evenings, blue sky days, and many options for family fun are in front of you. As the squirrels and chipmunks scurry to store food for the winter we are in a hurry too, to enjoy the warmth, colors, and fresh picked apples and pumpkins that are in abundance before the clocks “fall back” on November 5th and the cool wet weather arrives.
We’ve sorted through the many options and here are our recommended activities for you and yours;
AutumnFest: Fairytales in the Forest, Shaker Nature Center, October 7, 3-7pm
Cleveland Botanical Gardens Fall Events October 7-8 wagon rides throughout the picturesque grounds; October 14-15 costumes with your four-legged friends; October 21-22 pumpkin carving
Lake Metroparks Events including corn mazes, a pumpkin and corn weekend October 7/8, and drive thru the Halloween lights at Lake Farmpark
Patterson Fruit Farm Family Fun Fest apple picking, mazes, slides, and more. Make sure you set your navigation to the Mulberry Rd. location and not the Caves Rd farm market location!
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Trick or Treat Fest treat stations, train rides and Monster Mash dance party
Cleveland Museum of Natural History Sunday October 15 opens its all new Visitor Hall with the most iconic attractions and favorites exhibited. A dramatic setting that will be free to the public and will serve as the heart of a reimagined natural history museum.
Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s Towpath Trail see the Fall colors starting in Peninsula. Century Cycles is situated at the entrance to the Peninsula: Lock 29 Trailhead and you can rent bikes for children and adults as well as infant trailers. Parking is available around Century Cycles. Bring a picnic lunch for after the ride, or enjoy lunch at the Winking Lizard or nearby Szalay’s Farm Market.
Some other ideas not date-based, more of a pick up and go, along with fun at home:
Explore the beautiful changing trees on the trails and check out the programming at area Metroparks whether Lake, Cuyahoga, Summit or Portage. Take a hike with the kids and gather leaves to press in wax paper at home and make other crafts. Make up a scavenger hunt list and bring the dog so everyone is happy and exercised, i.e. tired once you return home.
With the crowds gone and no need to cover your little ones with sun protection lotion, head to the area beaches to look for sea glass, lake stones and if you’re lucky you may even find a heart-shaped one.
A family favorite is baking pumpkin bread or muffins, and for an extra WOW we add chocolate morsels and sprinkle the tops with sea salt. Betty Crocker’s recipe is tried and true.
And, for all those apples you’ve picked we suggest purchasing an apple corer usually available at the markets where you pick apples or can be ordered online. Fun for the kids to make apple peel snakes and to spiral slice the apples, we guarantee they’ll eat fruit!
There’s still time to pack everyone up in the car and head to the East or West Banks of the Flats to see steamships navigate the crooked river, the Cuyahoga. There’s a marine app that helps you track when one will be passing by. Lots of restaurants with decks along the banks as well as a park to hang out in with your picnic lunch. Merwin’s Wharf a Cleveland Metroparks restaurant has kid friendly food, outdoor seating, fire pits and clam bakes in the month of October, Nearby is a skate park and bicycle co-op if you’d like a more active afternoon.
Bring nostalgia back from your own childhoods if you grew up with deciduous trees. Get child sized rakes and grab yours too to create large leaf piles for the kids and dogs to jump into and snap photos of this simple magical play time.
We strive to help newcomers and their families take advantage of all that our region has to offer – including the Autumn season with not to be missed activities. We offer a library of blogposts to help them navigate and discover our staff’s favorites. And we always recommend that although the list of to-dos is endless right after a move that they take a break and have some fun exploring their new hometown. We’d love to talk, to help create that critical first impression for your candidates and to professionally onboard your new hires and their whole family to our region. Call Executive Arrangements, Inc. at 216.231.9311 for a consult.
