Staff Recs: Our Favorite Fall Activities

A woman’s hand holds a cup of hot apple cider in the foreground, surrounding the cup are four of her friends eating donuts and drinking cider on a picnic table. In the background there are trees and a river. The photo was taken on a film camera, so there is a slight discoloration.
Berkley senior and Editor-in-Chief Bella Bakeman holds a cup of hot apple cider in celebration of her first cider mill trip of 2023. It’s tradition for Bakeman and her friends to go to Yates Cider Mill, drink cider, eat donuts and walk the trails (Photo illustration by Bella Bakeman).

When the Pleiad is not reporting on new campus programs and Homecoming happenings, we are enjoying the fall. As autumn deepens and the days grow shorter, you too might be looking for ways to make the most of the best season of the year.

Below you will find a collection of fall activity recommendations from our staff.

Editor-in-Chief, Bella Bakeman

A woman turns away from the camera, her head slightly tilted to the right. In her left hand is a tote bag that reads “Stick Season.” In front of her is a wooden barrier, blocking off an entrance to the river, which is surrounded by trees.
Bakeman poses with a tote bag, dressed in a fall flannel on a trail at Yates Cider Mill. The tote bag is designed around singer-songwriter Noah Kahan’s album “Stick Season,” one of her favorite fall albums, many songs of which are featured in her fall playlist (Photo illustration courtesy of Bella Bakeman).
My Favorite Fall Activities Are:

I love it all, really I do, but I certainly have favorites, including re-watching “Gilmore Girls,” going to cider mills and drinking hot cider with cinnamon, baking fall treats (especially homemade pumpkin seeds) and dressing up in fall fits and costumes.

My Must-Do Halloween Traditions Are:

This is going to sound ridiculous, but it’s not Halloween if I haven’t seen “Girl vs. Monster” at least once. It’s really not a good movie, like at all, but I love it all the same. Rewatching it reminds me of Disney Channel movie marathons and the soundtrack is banging. 

Also, I always start decorating for fall and Halloween in mid-September and leave them up through November.

Fall is the BEST Season Because:
A young girl in jeans and a pink coat holds a doll in her right hand and a red leaf in the other. The background is full of fallen, fall-colored leaves.
Bakeman at the age of 3 holding a leaf up to the camera at Maxwell park in Royal Oak during the fall. Bakeman’s mother would always take her to parks and cider mills for photo shoots (Photo courtesy of Nicole Quirk).

Of all the activities, smells and holiday joy. I have a complicated relationship with most holiday seasons, but fall is so vast that I can pretend for a while. And Halloween, which has no negative feelings or memories, is my favorite holiday.

It is also my favorite music season, so much so I’ve cultivated a playlist I continuously add to:

“If fall was a feeling”

Managing Editor, Bonnie Lord

My Favorite Fall Activities Are:

Leaf collecting, watching Jacksepticeye’s play through of “Night in the Woods” and eating fall-flavored food!

Every time the season rolls around, I can’t resist picking up every pretty leaf I find. I give them to people or keep them on my wall until they’re dried and brown. I have my favorite leaf-collecting spots. And they’re definitely a secret.

Okay, bear with me here on the next item, I love this game, and better yet, I love Jack’s voices for each of the characters. It’s roughly seven hours of perfect entertainment, starring characters I love and a story that speaks to my soul — and I watch it every year.

Finally, fall has all the best foods: pumpkin pie, apple pie, apple cider, cinnamon doughnuts and especially those terrible Pillsbury decal cookies with the pumpkins and black cats. I love to bake, and this is the best time for it.

My Must-Do Halloween Traditions Are:

Making a costume, even if I am almost 21 and I can’t go trick or treating without looking a little silly. Some of my favorites have been: hermit crab, the Cambrian Explosion, and a cumulonimbus.

A young woman with short hair stands in an open-concept library space, wearing a costume made of overlapping pieces of cardboard in the shape of a large, complex cloud. A piece of the costume is worn around her face, and a piece of cardboard lightning hangs from the bottom.
Alma junior and Managing Editor Bonnie Lord in her homemade Halloween costume as a cloud, specifically a cumulonimbus. In the fall semester of 2023, she won the Library’s costume contest with this costume (Photo illustration courtesy of the Albion College Library).

I also love scary movies, and all the best ones are Halloween-oriented. One of my favorites is “Monster House,” which my siblings and I have memorized to the point of watching it like “Rocky Horror Picture Show” – watching is an event, to say the least.

Fall is the BEST Season Because:

I love this season because of, well, everything! The smells, the weather, the holidays, the music, the colors – it is the best time of year, easily.

Features/Opinions Editor, Jocelyn Kincaid-Beal

 Two children sit in the middle of a pile of brown leaves, smiling at the camera. The photo is aged and slightly out of focus.
7-year-old Ann Arbor junior and Features/Opinions Editor Jocelyn Kincaid-Beal sits in a leaf pile next to their older brother. Fall has been Kincaid-Beal’s favorite season as long as they can remember (Photo illustration courtesy of Jocelyn Kincaid-Beal).
My Favorite Fall Activities Are:

Going to Wiard’s Orchards, where in addition to an apple orchard they have a corn maze, hay rides, spooky attractions and lots of cider and donuts. Even as I’ve gotten older I still think it is a very fun place to go, but it is also incredibly nostalgic. I’m also a big fan of horror movies, and while I do watch them year round, they seem to hit a little harder in the fall.

My Must-Do Halloween Traditions Are:

From when I was a little kid up until my senior year of high school, my family made “candy pumpkins” every year. We’d take four plastic pumpkins, one assigned to each of us, and buy a bunch of candy. Then, we’d attach the candy to the pumpkins with pins in the shapes of faces. I have no idea why we started doing that, but I always looked forward to it because it was something we all did together, even after my parents got divorced. Every year we’d look back at pictures of last year’s creation, and aspire to make something more creative.

Four plastic pumpkins sit in a row on a white mantle top. Each one has various types of candy pinned to it in the shape of a face. In the background is a beige wall, a painting and some flowers.
A row of plastic pumpkins adorned with candy faces. Kincaid-Beal (artwork pictured left) and their family have a long tradition of creating “candy pumpkins” around Halloween (Photo courtesy of Colleen Kincaid).
Fall is the BEST Season Because:

It’s the perfect weather for all my flannels and sweaters, and there’s always a new horror movie to watch at the theater. It’s also the season with the best festive treats, speaking as someone with a wicked sweet tooth.

Assistant News Editor, Heidi Faramelli

A girl smiles in a cutout of a scarecrow with the words “Uncle John’s Cider Mill” written on it.
Angola junior and Assistant News Editor Heidi Faramelli smiles in a scarecrow cutout at a cider mill. Faramelli loves going to cider mills, and they always make her think of her grandparents who took her annually as a child (Photo illustration courtesy of Heidi Faramelli).
My Favorite Fall Activities Are:

I love to go to apple orchards and get donuts and apple cider. Trying all of the different fall donuts is so fun to me; there’s pumpkin, apple, regular, with sugar and without sugar. I especially love this activity because growing up I’d always go to the apple orchard near my grandparent’s house in Grand Ledge and it always makes me think of them.

My Must-Do Halloween Traditions Are:

Although it’s not particularly unique, I try to carve a pumpkin every year. I’ve only started doing this on my own recently, because when I was younger my dad would always carve the most intricate designs — he’s a graphic designer and an amazing artist, so I always entrusted him with my pumpkin. Now that I’m older, the best I can do is a regular ol’ jack o’lantern with two triangle eyes and a mouth with some teeth.

It isn’t pretty, but it’s the fun that counts!

A young girl wearing a red smock makes a disgusted face as she pulls pumpkin seeds out of a pumpkin at a table.
6-year-old Angola junior and Assistant News Editor Heidi Faramelli makes a face as she takes seeds out of a pumpkin. Faramelli has fond memories of pumpkin carving, although oftentimes her dad did all the work (Photo courtesy of Barb Fuller).
Fall is the BEST Season Because:

There’s so much to do; whether it be watching football games, snuggling up with a bowl of chili, watching comfort movies underneath heaps of blankets or jumping in leaf piles.

Also, the specific smell of fall is one that I adore: Walking outside and inhaling campfire smoke mixed with wet leaves that have fallen is an experience I truly feel bad that southern states do not get to have.

I can’t imagine living somewhere without seasons, because fall is so incredible that I forgive winter’s cold existence since I get to experience the wonders of what comes before it.

Staff Photographer, Lizzy Kelley

A young girl with brown hair and blue eyes slides face first down an enclosed metal slide. A reflection of the girl’s face can be seen in the slide between her outstretched hands.
Brighton sophomore and staff photographer Lizzy Kelley slides down a wooden tunnel slide at Spicers Cider Mill. Kelley enjoyed all the fun activities the apple orchards she visited had set up for kids (Photo illustration courtesy of Amy Dewan).
My Favorite Fall Activities Are:

Visiting Apple orchards and getting donuts from cider mills. When I was younger, my dad and I would go on DDDD’s (Daddy Daughter Donut Days) where we’d try to go to as many cider mills as possible in one day and try to compare the different donuts. It was a yearly tradition we did for as long as I could remember.

My Must-Do Halloween Traditions Are:

My Halloween traditions have always been carving pumpkins and making pumpkin seeds from the inside.

Fall is the BEST Season Because:

What makes the season great for me is seeing the colors in northern Michigan change and being able to experience the world in a brighter light before the weather gets gray and cold. I think fall is a great photo opportunity too, because you can make it fun with all the leaves and there are so many cute fall pictures you can find on Pinterest and try to recreate.

Also, Oreo needs to bring back the apple cider donut cookies this year!

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