We had planned to meet friends to do a corn maze this weekend but they were unable to join us. I was tired and cranky and thought about calling off our outing too. But I am so glad I didn’t. We went to Afton Apple and had an amazing time.
We started out with Phase I, the easiest of the three. It was pretty much impossible to get lost in it, and it was a good way to get the kids familiar with the corn maze and gauge how they would do with the next phase. They took turns being the leader. At one point, Mark was warning one of them to give the other their space and Connor said “but she is my part-i-ner” and Grace said “yeah.” It melted my heart.
After Phase 1, we took a break for a snack (caramel shake, pumpkin doughnut, apple cider and water) and tried out the hose maze. You had to get from the start to finish by crossing the hoses in the correct pattern (yellow, red, green). Grace and I worked on it forever and I finally gave up. She kept wandering around in it until finally a 13-year-old girl who was working on it with us figured it out. This was harder than the corn maze!
There was also a neat rope maze, where you started at the beginning of the rope and climbed under and over the other ropes until you reached the end. Connor jumped right it and did it as if he’d done it a hundred times.
Then we moved on to Phase II. It took a bit over a half-hour and we did get turned around a couple of times. At one point toward the end, a group of four boys about 12 years old worked with us to figure it out. I heard them saying as they moved ahead, “Maybe we should stay and keep helping them.” It was very sweet. And they did stick pretty close to us until we all made it out.
The kids liked pretending their were corn stalks. They also liked when we split up — girls go one way, boys go another way — and met shortly after. We’d meet up, and the two of them would laugh hysterically.
On the way home, we checked out a lookout over the convergence of the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers and had a small dinner at a tavern in Hastings. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon/evening.
My friend Molly took a bunch of young boys to this same maze for a birthday party the day before and had a MUCH different experience. Check it out.
Oh my gosh, I adore that photo of the four of them. So so so stinking cute.
And sounds like you had a perfect day. Starting to wonder if I am just a corn maze failure
Sounds like we were there on the same day, sorry to have missed you. I was flying solo with the two preschoolers and had seen Molly’s SOS tweets from the corn, so I stayed FAAAAR away from that side of the property. Wasn’t it a fantastic and gorgeous day?
I love the pictures Jen! The first one is so cute!
I adore the corn face picture! And the look on Connors face in the rope maze! Our maze place is too crowded to be fun, its not hard to find your way out in a pack of 100! And they were the Groupon special last week, sold 5,000 in 3 hours. I will not be going this year !