Corn Maze

We took the girls to this corn maze yesterday. The letters at the top say Rhythm & Roots . The large design inside the circle was made to look like the Tennessee state quarter and is actually a second maze.

The mazes are designated Blue and Green. We decided to try the Blue maze , which would have us working our way around the Rhythm and Roots letters, walk around the right outside edge of the quarter, and go back into the random maze pattern at the bottom left before exiting.


All the entrances and exits are on the left of the picture. We saw a sign that read Blue Maze Entrance and took the closest path to the sign. That was our only real mistake but it was a pretty big one.

Inside the maze are six checkpoints. At each checkpoint is a map that shows you where you are, and a hole puncher. You punch a hole in your card at each checkpoint.

We walked and walked and walked without seeing a checkpoint. After a while, we ran out of corn. We had somehow walked all the way across the maze (the diameter of the quarter) before we realized we had gone in the wrong entrance and were wandering around in the Green maze.
Looking back now, it would have made more sense at that point to have said , " OK, change of plans......THIS is the maze we're walking." But being surrounded by corn in all directions apparently affected our common sense as well as our orientation because we turned around and walked back (and walked and walked and walked) until we found a place to walk into the Blue Maze.

Now that we were already sweaty and tired and both girls were asking how much longer we had to walk around in corn, we were just BEGINNING the right maze. I was really beginning to wonder if this had been a bad idea. After all, we had actually paid someone $28 for the privilege of wandering around in his cornfield. I could just see him laughing to himself as he counted his money. "Those suckers!" he was saying to his wife.

Amazingly though, once we oriented ourselves, it wasn't so hard to work our way around the maze, and didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, considering how long it took us to figure out where we were.

Once we started seeing checkpoints the girls were on board again. They were so funny. We let them walk in the lead, but Keith and I made every decision about whether to turn right or left. We would get within sight of a checkpoint and the girls would run up to it yelling, " I found it! I found it!" They were bragging to each other about having guided us through the maze.

The owners were really very nice and they had made the place inviting enough to hang around awhile after we finished the maze. There was a playground the girls had to check out, so Keith and I sat at nearby picnic tables and watched them (and rested). The picnic area was under a stand of walnut trees and Keith threw walnuts over and over for the owner's dog to fetch. It was a very relaxing way to end our corn maze adventure.