Mazezilla

Every year we take a trip to Mazezilla. The name makes me giggle. It’s just so American. Mazezilla is a corn maze at Klingel Farms in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. As suggested by the name, it’s a large maze. 11 arces, in fact. This year’s theme is “A-Maze-ing 50’s” and the aerial view shows a juke box, fuzzy dice, a ’57 Chevy and other iconic images from the 1950s.

Visitors are issued a punch card and the added challenge of finding eight stations hidden through-out the maze where they can mark the card. There are “corn helpers” and “tower people” present inside the maze to ensure you don’t get lost…for too long. I think they should call them “corn people”, but that might remind visitors too much of that movie, Children of the Corn, which is just a bad idea all ‘round. Yeah.

This year we took my dad and his friend and we split into two teams. Grandparents and child on one team, husband and I on the other. We were sure we’d win. We didn’t have a kid slowing us down, right? In case we didn’t win, we had the fall back excuse that we had not purchases a map, meaning we’d claim victory on a technicality. We’d solve the maze on our own! Well, they won and they only used their map once. They won by about fifteen minutes, too, which sort of upset our technical victory as well.

Conquering the maze is only one of the activities we enjoy at Klingel Farms. My husband also likes to fling tennis balls at targets. The prize is a coupon off your pumpkin purchase. Thrilling, I know.

As you can see, it’s a very involved exercise. They used to let you slingshot small pumpkins. Not sure why they changed it. Might have something to do with a bad pumpkin harvest a few years back.

My daughter likes to play in the stack of hay bales. There are a lot of little tunnels and she comes out looking like a hairy farm animal. Straw stuck everywhere, hair all over the place. Then it’s time to pet the goats. Not sure why goats are so cute and why we always have to pet them. But we do and I squeal over their cuteness every time.

Back up at the farm stand, we buy pumpkins and everything else that catches our eye. This year we hauled away carving pumpkins, eating pumpkins, ugly pumpkins (for decoration. Yeah, I don’t get it, either), potatoes, apples and apple cider. It’s the colours that get you. All the piled up pumpkins with their weird skins and bright, fall colours. You need to take them home. We do, anyway.

So, it’s another good food week in our house. We’re going to roast the butternut squash, make another apple pie (already made and enjoyed, thank you very much!), toast up the seeds from our carving pumpkins and maybe even make some soup.

Enjoy the pretty pumpkin pictures!