October is Corn Maze Season

Oh, corn. It's in everything we eat, we hope to power our cars with it someday, and when October rolls around, we even go play in it. Truly, Americans have a corn problem. But of the three, the last really is the best: October is prime agritainment time, with corn mazes opening up around the region offering a fine excuse to get out of the city on the weekend, whether you've got kids or not.

For a lot of people, a corn maze and pumpkin patch sounds like family-friendly hell if you don't have kids, but the truth is, they're actually a great way to spend a weekend day, and an excuse to get a better pumpkin than you can find at Safeway. There's basically three types of people who go to the mazes: horny local teens (who come out in droves for "haunted" mazes nearer Halloween, which are never worth the effort), families, and hip urbanites.

There's a lot of variation between "corn mazes," some of which aren't really mazes at all. And while five years ago plenty of farms offered little more than a roadside fruit stand and Honeybuckets as additional amenities, these days the Halloween season is a full on affair at many places, with food and a variety of events on hand. Saturday, I hit up three different farms and their corn mazes in Snohomish, a pleasant (traffic permitting) and easy drive from Seattle.

The Farm at Swan's Trail: In terms of the complexity of the maze and the various other things to do onsite, The Farm at Swan's Trail takes the cake. Every year, they construct a maze based on the Washington State highway system, complete with plenty of interesting (if occasionally conservatively oriented) state history and factoids. It's not much of a maze, though, in the sense that you have a map and, of course, can figure out plenty if you know the highways fairly well. The Farm also offers a wide array of food (mostly in the hot dog category), as well as the best apple cider (it's real apple cider, not a packet you add hot water to). Oh, and they're a good value at $6 per adult for the maze.

Craven Farm: This was the one that impressed me most, and also the one I don't think I'd ever been to before. The maze itself, based on Alice in Wonderland, was the only one of the three that was ever actually maze-y--halfway through you have the option of taking the hard loop versus the easy loop, which leads you into a true-blue maze, with no helpful signs or hints, that's actually hard. Also, they have food, pumpkin catapults (of the relatively safe variety that you can use yourself), and the best pumpkin patch of the three. They also offer the best price for their corn maze at $5.50 per adult, making Craven Farm the slam-dunk of Snohomish corn mazes.

Stocker Farms: Ah, the most overrated of the three! The maze is actually two separate mazes which are both too simple and too short, and their schtick--the maze pays tribute to Snohomish's 150th anniversary--is cheesy, replete with a ballad and local factoids of interest to no one. Also, in order to make the maze spell out its message from aerial views, there's a lot of big open areas inside of it, which makes it not even feel like a maze. It's also the most expensive of the three at $8 per adult. The only reason to swing by is their roadside store, which has a great selection of fresh fruit and vegetables.