Apple Hill From Davis: Beat the October Crowd

Apple Hill is not one place you can park at. It is more than fifty family farms, ranches and wineries on the back roads above Placerville, between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. (Apple Hill Growers) You can get there without a car — barely, and only on the right day. So the trip is two decisions, which day and whose car. Get the day wrong and you lose the afternoon to traffic on a two-lane road.

What is actually open, and when

The ranches do not share a calendar. The association keeps a live Currently Open list — 26 growers on it today — but each sets its own season and hours:

• High Hill Ranch: August 15 to December 24, daily 9am–5pm.
• Rainbow Orchards, home of the hot apple cider doughnuts: September 5 to December 6, Sat–Sun 9am–5pm but Mon–Fri 9am–4pm through October 31.
• Larsen Apple Barn: August 30 to November 29, and the entire farm is closed Saturdays.
• Delfino Farms: bakery and grounds Friday to Monday, 10am–5pm, August 28 to November 23.

So pick the ranches first, the day second. And believe the closing times — one grower, on the county's visitor site: "when a ranch or winery says they close at 5 pm, they do close at 5 pm." (Visit El Dorado)

The October weekend problem

From the same page, a grower writing for the El Dorado County Visitors Authority:

"If you're planning a trip during October, expect traffic and lines. There will be lots of traffic, especially after 10 am." — Visit El Dorado

September and November weekends are busy too, it says, but not like October, and it recommends weekdays. The association's own FAQ nods at it: "many people visit on October weekends." (Apple Hill FAQ)

The fix is to come early and be headed home by early afternoon. There is no shortcut: the growers' site publishes no shuttle and no park-and-ride today, and the county's Stay & Play Shuttle is a subsidy for lodging groups, not a public bus. (Visit El Dorado)

Transit gets you there. It gives you about two hours.

Davis to Sacramento is the easy half — the Capitol Corridor and Yolobus 42 both do it well and cheaply.

From there, one public bus a day runs into the county: the Sacramento/South Lake Tahoe connector, run with Capitol Corridor and Amtrak, stopping at Placerville Station. It runs every day — one bus out late morning, one back mid-afternoon. (El Dorado Transit)

The last few miles have a bus too, and almost nobody knows it. Route 60 runs hourly Monday to Friday, Route 25 hourly on Saturday, and both timetables list Carson Rd. at Larsen Dr. — the street Rainbow Orchards and Larsen Apple Barn are on. (Route 60, Route 25) It is a request stop: call (530) 642-5383, option 2, an hour ahead. (El Dorado Transit)

So a car-free Saturday is possible. The catch: chain the one connector to the hourly local and you get about two hours on the ground before you start back. On Sunday there is no local route at all, and the weekday commuter buses do "NO intercity pick up or drop offs." (Sac Commuter)

That is not a knock on the buses. They are built for the people who live up there. It is the hours, and the Sunday gap, that decide it.

The county puts Sacramento Airport to Placerville at 55 miles and about an hour (Visit El Dorado); Davis adds the Causeway. Check your own map.

If you are the one with the car

Two in the car puts you in the carpool lane. Riders chip in for a trip you were making anyway, capped at the IRS rate. Nobody is taken out of your way: riders can be dropped at a transit stop already on your route, and you set the pickup point. You rate your riders on how they treated your car and the ride, and they rate you back. Four in one car is also the only cheap version of this day.

Going with people who are already going

Plenty of cars make this drive out of Davis in the fall, and most have empty seats. That is the idea behind TAGO: a carpool for students. Sign in with your .edu email, say where you are going, see who else is. Two things matter here.

The return is planned with the trip out. For events and places, the way back is part of the plan rather than something you sort out at 4pm with one bus left. Against a hard 5pm close, that is the whole game.

Your share is capped. What a rider contributes can never exceed the IRS standard business mileage rate for the day of the trip — a legal ceiling on cost-sharing, enforced in the code behind every trip, not promised in an ad. Past the first eight miles the per-mile rate eases down, so a run up the hill costs less per mile than one across town. More in how the cost of a ride gets split.

Nobody can promise a car will be there; it depends on who is going. So post an October Saturday a week or two out, not the Friday night. The Apple Hill page on TAGO shows how many are going; names stay private until you sign in with your .edu.

The checklist

1. Pick the ranches first, the day second. Their seasons and closing days differ.
2. If your schedule bends, go on a weekday or wait until November.
3. On an October weekend, be up there early and leaving by early afternoon.
4. Going car-free? Check both legs for your date and budget two hours up there.
5. Route 25 stops on Carson Road on a Saturday if you call ahead. Sunday, nothing.
6. Otherwise sort a car and post the trip a week out.
7. Bring a cooler. Dogs welcome on a leash you are holding.