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Brian Heyman

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All right, thank you. Rich. Well, if you're looking for a night out with the family, how about a classic? Yeah, our Shannon Lanier takes us to Seville Falls mini golf in this week's road trip, close to home, whether you're a pro golfer or you've never touched a club before. Sayville Falls. Mini golf is the perfect place to come. Have fun on the green. Come on. Come on. Yes. Here there are 18 different holes to put in, which is plenty of time to be my family. So good luck with that. Oh, good job. I don't care who wins. I just love looking at the waterfalls and there are even fish here. Let's get back to how I'm gonna win, whether it's over the bridge through the tunnel or down the steps. Y yeah, look, I'm winning kids. It doesn't matter who wins, just have fun. And remember if you're not that great at mini golf, there are plenty of other games here too. It's the corner for me and volleyball. I like the ping pong area while the kids play, adults can hang out and get a drink in the beer garden. And after everyone's worked up an appetite indulge in some of the best food around. Thanks to local burger co that makes handcrafted specialty burgers and more. Oh, that was good. Who's ready for another game? Let's go from Fayetteville Falls mini golf with the Lanier family on this road trip. Close to home.

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It's one thing to soak up the New York City skyline from land or even by air. But how about by the beast? I feel this is the best way to see New York all aboard New York City's only speedboat ride if you dare. I don't want to get too wet, but I expect you will get wet departing from pier 83 and roaring its way down the Hudson river. This rowdy roller coaster ride is full of twists, turns and some wet and wild fun. We zip down to the statue. Stop there, take a few photos for people and then I do some spins and tricks and then shoot right back and the beast boasts the speediest tricks and spins in all of the big apple. We blow past all these other tour guide boats. Uh It's about 45 miles an hour, whereas the other tour guide boats, they are only doing like 18 knots, 20 knots. So we're doing double their speed, some splashes from the sea, some splashes from aboard and even some smooches from this fish and the bad hair day. The Statue of Liberty. It's so worth the view at pier 83. I'm Jordan Kisa.

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Well, they've been growing apples for two centuries and this season they celebrate one year since the addition of their new cider house in this week's road trip. Close to home, we'll take you to Southington where it's apple season fall is the classic New England season. We're at Rogers Orchards in Southington, Connecticut. We're an eighth generation family farm that dates back to 1809 when my great, great, great, great, great grandfather Chauncey first started planting baldwin apples right down the block from here. And we've been growing apples since we have two farm stands. Uh on either end of Southington, we have a lot of great farm products like apple cider donuts. They're pretty famous throughout the state. That's fall for us. You know, a, a hot apple cider doughnut, an apple right off the tree. We're kicking off, pick your own season here at Roger's Orchards. We got a beautiful crop of big apples. You purchase a bag and you head out into the orchards. You can take as long as you want. So you wanna grab your apple from the tree, hold it gently and maybe rotate a little bit around the branch and there's your apple and we'll be picking six days, seven days a week right up until the middle of November. This is the Long View Cider House orchard bar. So we're a part of Roger's Orchards. The hard cider has been a great venture for us. We have eight ciders on tap, 12 ciders and bottles and cans. We hope it brings out a different generation and new families on the weekends, we have a rotating list of excellent food trucks. We have put together an experience here that will be really memorable for everybody in Connecticut and beyond. It just really invites people to enjoy the orchard in a, in a way that we hadn't been able to before and seeing families really come out and enjoy the apples that we grow on a beautiful fall day. And my family gets a lot of satisfaction seeing uh customers really enjoy their experience on the farm. It's just a nice full day out in the fresh air. That is gorgeous. All right, Rogers Orchards is open seven days a week. Check out long view Cider house Thursday through Sunday. For more information on apple picking and how to visit. Go to News twelve.com.

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Contemporary practices, live side by side amongst classic construction and gorgeous gardening at the Weathersfield estate and garden news. 12 video journalist John Dulac takes us there on this week's road trip close to home. So Weathersfield is also a conservation farm. The 1000 acres that Mr Stillman really transformed into what we are today and brought in a farmer from the dust bowl and they implemented contour farming to reduce soil erosion. And then they built all these retention ponds throughout the property to catch the runoff of water. So that would always be on hand, which has become very useful for us. In fact, in 2022 when we had terrible droughts, that's how we irrigated our garden. It's a historic garden and we're gonna abide to the history of the garden, especially like I said, the Italian Renaissance Garden, an Italian Renaissance Garden is the scale and you keep it that way. But we're gonna have a little bit of fun with in inside a lot of those beds, arts and crafts style garden. That's an area where we do have a little bit more freedom in, in choosing plants. So we can express more chauncey Stillman would not have left it static. He, he would be doing exactly what we're doing here. We also have Weathersfield House, which is a Georgian brick style home that was built in 1939 by Mr Chauncey Stillman. This room that we're standing in now, in fact, the wood paneling came from an old courthouse and then they dress it up a bit to be more formal with some of the gold that you see the house right now. And the way it is, it's, it's preserved to be um open for tours. So we try and have a look similar to how it looked when Mr Sloman was here. There are beautiful long wings filled with beautiful art collection. In fact, we have a room specifically called The Glory at which the whole entire ceiling is painted with this fresco that people have come from all over the sea. So it's one of the highlights of the visit. The library is a beautiful space as well. It has a really unique wood carving above the mantle, which just makes it just a very unique and you feel like you're really in the country, stepping back in time.

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This week's road trip close to home, get your comfy shoes on news. 12 Sa Abbas is taking us for a nature walk at Pelham Bay Park. It's the perfect location for hiking, kayaking horse trails and fishing. Pelham Bay Park is more than three times the size of Manhattan's Central Park. Fun fact there. Urban Park Ranger Benn Young took us through a trail off Hunter Island. We saw the Tilly's Rock and Young told News 12, these are boulders that were pushed here by the Wisconsin glaciers. They were left behind when the ice melted. Lot of people have maybe a misconception about it. And I think coming here you can see and feel like it's really a lot cleaner than people think it's a lot safer and a lot nicer and there's something to do all year round. A lot of animal and plant life that you can check out there. Pretty cool.

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You're looking for a fun outdoor outing this weekend that's perfect for the whole family. In this week's road trip close to home, our Amanda Eustace and photojournalist James Crow take us to a farm in Morris County where there's everything from tractor rides to goat yoga. From goats to donkeys and even a zebra, if you love animals, this place is for you. I'm Amanda Eustace, and on this week's road trip close to home, we're checking out and feeding the animals here at Brook Hollows barnyard in Bon Township. So the farm has been here forever. My great grandfather came over from Sweden and he bought land. This was just all empty, just grassy fields. My mom 16 years ago decided to turn this into a business. I'd say we started probably about 20 animals right now we're up to 200 animals. We have different species right now we have a zebra which is our coolest feature. We have alpacas, donkeys, horses, sheep, ducks, chickens, bunnies. We have it all, and one of their most popular activities goat yoga. Goat yoga is brand new. It's about I'd say a year old, um, so it's literally just yoga with the goats. It's the coolest interaction. I thought we said, can't we sit right here. No, we don't sit. It's just awesome having people enjoying and spending time with the animals and learning how to love them in a kind, safe way. So we do birthday parties, field trips. We get hundreds of different kids who come out to see the animals for field trips, goat yoga, like I said, in the fall we do pumpkin picking so people can come take their cute little pumpkin patch pictures, um, and get pumpkin. So we do it all right now with so much to offer, now it's your turn to come and take a road trip and maybe use this new 12.

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