With the weather beginning to shift to a more autumn-like feel, and hints of leaves changing color more each day, local area residents may be looking for ways to experience all the season has to offer in the local area. One opportunity to celebrate the season exists just outside Montevideo, a couple of miles off Highway 212. Sam’s Pumpkin patch is owned by 17-year-old Montevideo High School student Sam Ripley and is open this year for its second season. Ripley, knowing that the local area doesn’t have a lot of nearby fall family activities available, started brainstorming ideas for the venture a few years ago. “I have actually had this kind of idea for the last three or four years, but I’ve never really gotten into it before now because I was young enough that I didn’t fully understand everything I needed to do to get started,” Ripley said in an interview last fall. Now in the second year of business, Ripley has learned a lot from last year’s success and has added even more opportunities for a family adventure to the property. New games this year include a gaga ball pit, a life-sized Foosball game, a gravity- wagon basketball game, a life-sized billiards game, disc golf, Spikeball, four square, and a life-sized game of Sorry. Ripley has also added a gem mining feature, with an underground tank that pumps water up through a man-made 22-foot-long river with a circulation pump that allows for kids purchasing mining kits from the gift shop to do their own gemstone mining.

Of all the headlines published when the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was signed into law by President Biden on August 6th, what made me most curious was what specifically this would mean for Medicare beneficiaries and their pocketbooks. AARP is a non-partisan organization which advocates for lower prescription drug costs so I knew they would have the details I was looking for.