Sarah in a Corn Maze

           Ahh, fall.  That wonderful time of year where the air turns crisp and the leaves change color.  It’s time for apple picking, pumpkin carving, and bundling up in warm sweaters.  In my opinion, fall truly is the greatest season.  Nature is always the prettiest during this time of year.  Unfortunately, fall always seems like the shortest season in Michigan, so I always try to make the most of it before it’s over.  For that reason, last weekend, my friends and I decided to take a trip to Fennville and go to Crane’s Apple Orchard to wander through a corn maze.  This has become a tradition of ours over the past couple of years.  Every year, during a weekend in the fall, we travel to a new corn maze which we have never been to before.  This year, Crane’s was the lucky winner.

            Fennville is only about an hour away from Spring Lake, so it was perfect for a Sunday afternoon trip.  The corn maze team included my friends Suzie and Katie (who are sisters) and Katie’s boyfriend Bobby.  Suzie and Katie’s parents and grandmother came with us so they could pick some deliciously ripe Honeycrisp apples while we did the corn maze.

            At the entrance to the corn maze, we were asked to decide on whether we wanted to complete Phase 1 or Phase 2 of the maze.  We, being a bit naive and a bit more competitive, decided to choose Phase 2.  We were then given a choice of cards with different trivia questions on them to help us out at checkpoints within the maze.  We chose the card that asked questions about modern music, movies and television.  Then, finally, we entered the maze.  Our goal was to complete the maze in under an hour. 

In retrospect, we greatly overestimated our navigational skills.

            At first, we were doing relatively well.  We basically had to wander in random directions until we came to a checkpoint sign.  At each sign, we found the corresponding question number on our card and answered the question.  The correct answer would tell us which direction to turn.  So, for example, question 8 asked, “What is the name of Tom Hanks’s wife?”  We selected the answer C, Rita Wilson, which told us to turn left.  We continued with these questions for a long time.  The difficult part, though, was that there were only 10 checkpoints in the entire maze.  So, after answering a question and heading off in the right direction, we would soon come to more forks in the path and would just have to guess which direction to travel.  As we got deeper and deeper into the corn maze, we were soon walking in circles and lost all sense of direction.  At first, it was pretty funny and we would just head off in the opposite direction to try again.  But then the afternoon sun grew hotter, and we started to get hungry and thirsty and tired.  We kept ending up in the same places and had no idea where to go.  An hour had already passed, and we were stumped.  Every path looked the same as the one before it.  We couldn’t see anything in front of us except tall, green corn stalks and the dirt beneath our feet.  We were lost in nature.

Suzie, Katie, and Bobby looking lost and confused. 9/20/15

            Finally, we somehow ended up at a wooden overlook which allowed us to see the entire corn maze.  When we climbed onto it, we were shocked.  We had not realized how large the maze was, or how far we had already walked.  The color green seemed to stretch on for miles.  Luckily, though, were able to spot the farm building where we had checked in and set off again in that direction.  For the next forty-five minutes, we continued wandering and answering questions at checkpoints.  Again, we walked in circles and ended up on paths which we had already walked on.  

Miles and miles of corn. 9/20/15

Somehow, after nearly two hours in the maze, we found our way out.  We made a huge, embarrassing scene by high-fiving each other and cheering, but we were so relieved that we didn’t care.  We had made it out alive!

We did it! 9/20/15

The funny thing is, the same thing happened to us last year at the Robinette’s corn maze in Grand Rapids.  We thought that we would be better at navigating a maze this year, but we were hilariously wrong.  Still, it was a lot of fun and it was refreshing being outside and being surrounded by nature.  We will definitely be completing another maze next year!