A-Maise-ing! Sunday, the Karoberon (KA-ryn,

A-Maise-ing!

Sunday, the Karoberon (KA-ryn, ROB, camERON) went to Albany to check out the recently-featured-in-the-Guardian corn maze. If you didn't see the article, some guy created a maze out of his corn-field. We got there and the parking lot (first of all, I was impressed there was a parking lot) was pretty full. Maybe 20 cars. The place was abuzz with people. The barn where you paid your admission had a popcorn machine with great smelling popcorn, other concessionary type purchasables and other assorted corn and/or touristy related items. I was told that this was the busiest the place had ever been. Way to go, Guardian!

Driving up I kept trying to figure out how much it'd cost. I thought it *could* be free. You know, just a cornfield with a half-assed maze within it. I thought a coupla dollars. When I got there, and realised it was a *thing*, I knew there'd be some charge. In the barn, the sign (I thought) said adults $1. Very reasonalbe, I thought. Even low. Turns out it was adults $6, children $5. Hmm, well okay. 20 dollars after taxes for the three of us. For a corn maze. Corn.

And the maze? Well, I'm a tall guy and the few mazes I've been to, I can usually see over them. Not so with this one. Nice and high. The mazes I've been through usually have the 'correct' path worn down much more than the false routes. Not so with this one. All routes are equally treaded, so you can get no clues from that. And the corn is more than sufficiently grown so that you can't see others on the 'other' side of the corn-row. You can hear people nearby you, but unless they're directly in view on your path, they are usually invisible. Another nice feature. And the maze itself was big enough and long enough so that sometimes when you went down the wrong path, you'd walk for quite a ways until you came to the end.

So, in you go. You're given a coupla sheets of paper. One has corn or potato info questions on it. When you come to a numbered choice of direction in the maze, you read question of the corresponding number. Get it right and you go in the direction it tells you. Get it wrong and you're sent in the wrong direction. A great idea. The other sheet has ten lines to write down ten 'treasure hunt' items. Throughout the maze are ten numbered sticks, each with something written on it. Find all ten, write them down and you can enter your name to win some type of prize. It was actually quite challenging to find all ten.

Over all, I was quite impressed with the maze. A couple of times we got lost, a coupla more times we had difficulty finding the next treasure hunt item. In all, it took us about 30-40 minutes to get through, and it was a pretty fun time. The last 10 minutes or so was kind of "let's just get to the end". AFter all, you're surrounded by corn.

Congratulations to the people who created the maze. Obviously a lot of thought went into the design and implementation. If the corn hasn't been harvested yet, I'd recommend you go to Albany (it's on route 1-a) and check it out.