We did a corn maze on Sunday. It was NASCAR themed, and I think that's pretty awesome, in some kind of ironic way. The whole corn maze thing is pretty sweet, but like all of my little diversions, it went horribly awry.
Before I get into the maze itself, I'd like to point out that they also had a pumpkin cannon. Yes. Pumpkin Cannon. It was powered by compressed air, and fired pumpkins at a school bus and a few other targets that had been placed about a hundred yards away. Amongst the three of us, we blew about $15 on shooting pumpkins at a bus, which I think alone makes it count as a worthwhile day. But anyway, the maze:
As anyone on this half of the continent noticed, it rained last weekend. For Maryland in specific, it was Saturday. So, when we got there, the woman collecting admissions warned us that it was a bit muddy, but we figured, "eh." And it was a little muddy, but not bad. I got off easy since I'm pretty light, but my heavier companions sank in a little bit and pretty quickly accumulated a couple pounds of mud on their shoes.
Still, we weren't having trouble getting around, it was just somewhat annoying, and the maze was pretty fun, so we did a couple more (the field comprised 4 separate mazes). By the third one, now, it was getting dark, which was partly what we were waiting for: what kind of Halloween activity would it be if we quit at dusk? So, we'd brought a flashlight and everything.
Now, first off, even with a map of the maze, navigating is not easy without the sun. It's pretty hard to get a sense of the shapes around you with only about a 60 vision field. Plus, the maze that we were in at the time contained the checkerboard flag portion of the Nascar theme, so everything sort of looks the same anyway. We had to back track three or four times looking for the second checkpoint, and then it turned out we'd walked past it about twice.
Still, what's the point of a maze if you don't get lost even once? Then, the flashlight died. Bear in mind that we'd just passed through the most difficult part of the maze to navigate, and were just about halfway through it. We kind of figured we'd passed the point of no return, so we decided to keep going. We'd stop, flip open someone's cell phone to look at the map, memorize the next four or five turns we needed to take, and then proceeded as best we could without, you know, seeing anything. Thank God that Frederick is a big enough city to reflect some light of the clouds; we could at least see where the corn stopped and the sky began, so we could tell when we'd reached a branch point.
The last straw was right around the fourth checkpoint (of 6). Suddenly, the ground was just gone, replaced by basically a path-shaped pond. Naturally, without the ability to see where the hell we were stepping, everyone ended up ankle deep in mud, and up to the lower calves in water above that.
That was about where we gave up and turned back.
But then we went to Cracker Barrel, and all was well.
Before I get into the maze itself, I'd like to point out that they also had a pumpkin cannon. Yes. Pumpkin Cannon. It was powered by compressed air, and fired pumpkins at a school bus and a few other targets that had been placed about a hundred yards away. Amongst the three of us, we blew about $15 on shooting pumpkins at a bus, which I think alone makes it count as a worthwhile day. But anyway, the maze:
As anyone on this half of the continent noticed, it rained last weekend. For Maryland in specific, it was Saturday. So, when we got there, the woman collecting admissions warned us that it was a bit muddy, but we figured, "eh." And it was a little muddy, but not bad. I got off easy since I'm pretty light, but my heavier companions sank in a little bit and pretty quickly accumulated a couple pounds of mud on their shoes.
Still, we weren't having trouble getting around, it was just somewhat annoying, and the maze was pretty fun, so we did a couple more (the field comprised 4 separate mazes). By the third one, now, it was getting dark, which was partly what we were waiting for: what kind of Halloween activity would it be if we quit at dusk? So, we'd brought a flashlight and everything.
Now, first off, even with a map of the maze, navigating is not easy without the sun. It's pretty hard to get a sense of the shapes around you with only about a 60 vision field. Plus, the maze that we were in at the time contained the checkerboard flag portion of the Nascar theme, so everything sort of looks the same anyway. We had to back track three or four times looking for the second checkpoint, and then it turned out we'd walked past it about twice.
Still, what's the point of a maze if you don't get lost even once? Then, the flashlight died. Bear in mind that we'd just passed through the most difficult part of the maze to navigate, and were just about halfway through it. We kind of figured we'd passed the point of no return, so we decided to keep going. We'd stop, flip open someone's cell phone to look at the map, memorize the next four or five turns we needed to take, and then proceeded as best we could without, you know, seeing anything. Thank God that Frederick is a big enough city to reflect some light of the clouds; we could at least see where the corn stopped and the sky began, so we could tell when we'd reached a branch point.
The last straw was right around the fourth checkpoint (of 6). Suddenly, the ground was just gone, replaced by basically a path-shaped pond. Naturally, without the ability to see where the hell we were stepping, everyone ended up ankle deep in mud, and up to the lower calves in water above that.
That was about where we gave up and turned back.
But then we went to Cracker Barrel, and all was well.