Last week, while surfing facebook I came across a friend’s post from a recent visit they did to a hay maze at Arata farms in Half Moon Bay. It looked awesome, so on a week-end that S needed some alone time to tackle his to-do list, I took the boys out. It took us an hour to get there (typical fall HMB traffic).
We drove past Bob’s pumpkin patch, which is where we’d been going for the past two years, and took a turn just a “block” past into Arata. I was super stoked to see that Arata was not only about the hay maze, but also had pumpkins. Two birds, one stone. I had brought my camera for our annual pumpkin picks, so score!!!!
I have a rule with the kids: “no pumpkin bigger than the size of your head”. This coincides with “no pumpkin heavier than you can carry”…. and “no pumpkin pricier than what I was to pay for”. S2’s approach to pumpkin shopping is to get the smallest pumpkin he can find. He thinks smallest = cutest, so every teenie pumpkin was cute. G’s a bit of the opposite — he goes for large, so the rule is especially helpful for him. We often compare: how big is your head next to that pumpkin? Also makes for good photo opp. This year I caved though and let him get one on the larger side. Sadly for me, though, I had to carry it most of the way, because it did get unwieldly for him.
We picked our pumpkins first. Good call. Got the kids to look over the maze — also good call. Then paid, and decided to drop the orange spheres back in the car before we went into the maze. THAT, on the other hand was a bad call. G tripped on the way back to the car, scraped his hand, and then just wanted to go home. Enter in sad mommy. Bummer. We went home. I went back to return the tickets, and we just drove home.
That was the maze that wasn’t.
However, after we got home and got to tell S about it, he got interested in going. This is a pleasant surprise, because the man hates driving to go to adventures like this. So we planned a second trip this past week-end. Next week-end is Pumpkin Fest in HMB, and you couldn’t pay me enough money to sit through THAT traffic, so it had to be either yesterday, or wait for another two weeks.
S2 literally ran the maze. This sucked, because we’re talking human adult sized maze, that takes 30 min to get through. Adults can’t see through the end (since the hay piles are taller than an adult), so it wasn’t exactly difficult to lose a child in there. And he wouldn’t stop running off. Thankfully most turns were dead ends, so he didn’t get too far, too quick, but still definitely a heart-racer there.
On the second trip, S2 found an even smaller pumpkin — it fit in his pocket, so it had to come home. Also G discovered the gourds and found one that looks like a perfect swan. It came home too. I’m a sucker!
The maze though was truly awesome! I’m hoping they’ll bring it back year after year, because I hope we can continue going every fall. They do evening maze runs too, which sounds evilishly fun.
G also had a fun run using my camera. I’m actually pretty proud of this kid. It took a bit of training, but he know knows how to back-button focus, take a photo, and zoom in and out. He was full on directing us what to do too. I might have to invest a bit more time teaching him how to work it more. Though admittedly, it IS a heavy combo, so it’s something I don’t completely trust him to run off with. Still — lookie!!!! I’m IN photos.
