Finishing The Maze for the First Time

It took three tries and extra help to get all the stamps and crossword answers to finally complete the maze at Queens Farm.  AF and SMM proved to be really helpful to Eddie and me in navigating through corn stalks and finding mailboxes and clues.  AF, fired up as usual, ran around the maze, finding the first five boxes in a matter of five minutes.  Pretty impressive.  We continued to find box after box, clue after clue, passing by women with carriages who looked down-trodden, one woman in particular looking as if she were about to pass out, and some women and children who we began the maze with who somehow finished and waved to us from the bridge while we were mid-search (I think they did not get all the stamps on the puzzle--it's impossible).  Then there was the guy who was roaming around on his own.  We passed him several times.  AF and I decided he was a murderer.  I think he was practicing how to run from the cops.

After what seemed like ten hours, SMM claimed that he was having fun but just wanted to get the fuck out of the maze.  That pretty much sums up how we all felt.  Really, it's fun at first, but then when you pass the same boxes and clues about 87 times, it wears you down. Not helpful were the folks who sit in the tower in the middle of the maze who play bad music and make unfunny jokes.  Also not helpful are the folks on the bridge who congratulated us on finding the beginning of the maze when we tried backtracking and indeed found ourselves at the entrance (which is actually next to the exit, so we were so close yet so far). Then the folks in the middle asked everyone, I bet you're all looking for number four.  Yes! Yes we were looking for number four.  They said, Yup, that's the hardest one to find!  Then they said nothing else.  So instead of help, they were really rubbing in the fact that we couldn't get the fuck out.

Plus, part of the maze smelled like horses.  Horses smell gross.  We needed to find the end.

Somehow, as if they were touched by the maze gods, SMM went one way and AF and Eddie went the other, and they all came back with new information.  SMM  had found four and AF and Eddie had found the exit.  I had found nothing and was standing there, sweaty and confused.  BUT we quickly got stamp four and then quickly made our way out and avoided having to be interviewed by the woman on the bridge.  Instead, we watched all the flags moving throughout the maze back and forth back and forth, lost and confused as we had been.

The rest of the farm was simple.  Picked a pumpkin.  Pet an alpaca.  Left without having to deal with too many screaming children. 

Live band at the casino!

With the morning fun over, a few hours later, we found ourselves at Resorts World Casino.  The first thing I did was sit at a Wheel Of Fortune slot machine, hit a spin, and then hit $100 on the spin.  I cashed out.  The best time we had was watching SMM play The Hangover slots.  He hit on a bonus and then sat there for about five minutes while the machine basically did its own thing.  Its own thing included lots of winning without any effort.  I didn't have much luck after that, lost on a Sex and the City game, and left thirty bucks lighter than when I arrived.  Still, we'd been entertained by a large man in a white suit singing Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars at the bar, so it was like paying for an impersonator concert.  Not too bad of a deal.

This year, we did not carve a pumpkin.  Instead, we drew on it and glued things to it.  Less mess.  Still a great pumpkin.