After you’ve picked thirty bushels of apple. You’ve baked them, mashed them, cooked them and eaten them with peanut butter or cheese, then you might move onto pumpkins, maybe a few spooky venues. But once you get bored of those, here are some unique Fall-time activities:

1. Wolf Hollow – odd, sexy and dangerous. Watch wolves in their natural habitat. Learn about them, see them run in packs. This one of kind location is a perfect Fall activity. Just bundle up in a blanket and sit and watch them. It’s located in Ipswich. It’s open every weekend and it’s less than $10 a person to get in.  Children $5.

2. The Center Church Crypt – Connecticut is probably not high on your list of great Goolish places to visit this October, but it should be.  Here, there is a fascinating crypt tucked away in the subterranean underworld of the Center Church, where you can see tombstones dating back as far as 1687.The crypt that is tucked away beneath Center Church holds the identifiable remains of 137 people, among them city founder Theophilus Eaton; Benedict Arnold’s first wife, Margaret Arnold; James Pierpont, one of the founders of Yale College; and the grandparents of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes. It is believed that about 1,000 unidentified individuals are also buried beneath the church.

3. Jumbo’s Ashes – P.T. Barnum’s promotion of Jumbo as the “Largest Elephant on Earth” made him a legend among pachyderms. Tragically, at the height of his circus career, Jumbo was run over by a freight train. Thanks to the wonders of taxidermy, Jumbo’s 1,500+-pound carcass was stuffed and displayed at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Ah, but tragedy struck again, and a 1975 fire destroyed the over-sized stuffed animal. Jumbo’s charred remains are now safely locked away in a peanut butter jar in a safe at the University’s athletic department. If you visit Tufts, you can see a small statue of Jumbo in the Quad.

4. Lizzie Borden’s Murderabelia – Massachusetts’ Fall River Historical Society is the proud keeper of all of the great artifact clues in the 1892 mystery of whether Lizzie Borden really whacked her folks, including Lizzie’s hatchet, Ma and Pa Borden’s stomachs, pillow shams dotted with blood, locks of the victims’ hair and crime scene photos. If that’s not creepy enough for ya, stay in the house where it all took place–now the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast! The Historical Society is at 451 Rock Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the Lizzie Borden B&B is at 92 Second Street. Call 508-675-7333 for B&B reservations.

Course..if you lived in the 1700′s here are a few activities you would be doing:

• making baskets
• preparing a reindeer skin
• barrel burning [aka barrel bonfires] – organized into  pyramid and burned!
• sleighing parties with lap robes and hot mulled cider
• farmer “dance rooms” built into barns w/ fiddlers and singers
• and…just before the Revolution, “visiting” became a frequent activity.

Autumn Facts

• In autumn, there is less sunlight because the days are shorter. Because sunlight is a crucial ingredient in the leaf “factory”, the leaf is unable to sustain itself any longer. It becomes weak, breaks from the branch, and floats to the ground.
• did you know that leaves are really red, yellow, orange, and brown all year long? We just can’t see it! The intense green pigment of chlorophyll actually blocks the pigments of the other colors. You could say that the other colors are “invisible”. In the autumn, red, yellow, orange, and brown become visible and bright when the green chlorophyll weakens before the leaf falls off the tree.
• pumpkins are a fruit!
• Pumpkin, especially their seeds, have been used historically to treat several ailments, including freckles and snake bites. More applicable to health concerns today, eating pumpkins seeds can help prevent prostate cancer in men, protect against heart disease and also have anti-inflammatory benefits.