Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me (or the Critters)

I'm back after a little break. I had the kids last week while Rian headed to Orlando for training.

We headed to Ft. Valley, Georgia on Saturday June 19 for the annual Georgia Peach Festival. Rian and I have been excited about this largely due to the world's largest peach cobbler. We were told to temper our enthusiasm a little this year due to some internal festival squabbles but I can tell you it turned out to be a great time, aside from the drive up there. The Critters are stil getting used to their new car seats and they didn't want anything to do with them this particular morning.

Ft. Valley, Georgia.

They even have peaches on their streets!

We hit the road at 7am first stopping a Breugger's Bagels for some peach coffee, just to get us in the right mindset. While peach and coffee does not sound like it would marry too well, I can assure you it is quite tasty, and this come from someone who strictly drinks plain black coffee. We headed up through Thomasville, Georgia through some other small towns until we merged with I-75. A few minutes later we were pulling up to Meghan's house. Meghan and her mom took us to down town Ft. Valley were all of the happenings were. We just missed the parade but we were able to see all of the street vendors and see the sights. Meghan and her mom had to head off around 1pm, Meghan had to take a teacher's test.

Can you tell who is excited?

Meghan, Kathy, Rian, the girls.

Dad and Hadley (aka Peach (note it is singular, peaches = stripper).)

Meghan and Rian.

Rian and I headed over to Lane Packing which put us into peach overload. We had a bite to eat here and it was excellente. Rian came up with a great plan for the Critters, she got them the salad bar so we could feed them a little bit of everything. We then took the tour of the packing facility which was actually pretty cool. It is amazing seeing the shear number of peaches that flow through this place. We grabbed a few peach items, peaches (of course), peach bread, and peach preserves.

Brother finally succumbed to "peach overload."

Hadley.

CarCar.

Brother.

We had to wake him up for this picture, hence the look of disdain.

The world's largest peach cobbler was scheduled to be doled out around 2pm. Apparently we should have gotten there a little bit earlier, the line was quite long and it was about a bazillion degrees outside. We braved the heat to get our cobbler and then headed back tot he AC. Meghan's mom called to let us know that Pearson Farms had a batch of white peaches. For those of you that don't know these are the Holy Grail of peaches. These things are so freakin' good. Unfortunately, they ripen a little later in the season so we weren't able to get too many of them. Off again in the car, this time our bearings were Tallahassee, Florida. It was a long hot day but we were able to cram in a lot of fun. Thanks again to Meghan and her mom for showing us around.

Oh, and the peach bread makes ridiculously good french toast.

Chris