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Autumn A-MAiZE-ment
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I’m an intelligent person. I mean, I can figure out how to work a VCR timer; I can solve the occasional brain teaser (given time) and given a map, I can find my way around. But for some reason, I could not get out of the corn MAiZE in Meridian. Little children were sprinting around me, screaming and laughing (taunting me, I’m sure) going any way they wanted, and they were able to get out before me.
The corn MAiZE is back again this year, and better than ever. It covers 13 acres, the path is a total of 5 1/2 miles long, and the average time to make it through is an hour and 45 minutes to two hours (at least that’s what the owner Sam Johnson told me.) So what was my excuse for this three-hour tour? Bad sense of direction? No, I’ll blame the people I was with, who kept saying to turn left when it was obvious we should have turned right.
Five years ago, Brett Herbst got the idea to make a maze out of a cornfield from a farming magazine. He started the first MAiZE in Provo, Utah, but the concept has caught on like mad and there are now over 60 MAiZE locations across the U.S. Herbst has now designed over 102 mazes since his first.
Last year’s maze drew over 40,000 visitors, and due to those high numbers, a second location has been added in Nampa. This year’s Meridian design is in the shape of a cowboy on a bucking bull along with the words Yee Haw Idaho’. The Nampa MAiZE is a six-acre representation of Mr. Potato Head along with the words “Idaho’s Famous Potato”. Sam Johnson also told me that if you get a chance to see either maze from a plane it’s quite extraordinary.
Both the Meridian and Nampa MAiZEs opened last Friday. For everyone who went through the MAiZE in Nampa, a dollar was donated to help Christa Jett, a Notus High School junior who has been diagnosed with Ewig’s Sarcoma and is paralyzed from the tumor. She is hospitalized in Philadelphia while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. But donations can also be made at any Home Federal Savings and Loan branch in Christa’s name.
The Maize will be running through Oct. 31. The hours are Monday to Thursday 4-9:30p.m.; Friday 4-10:30p.m.; and Saturday’s 10a.m.-10: 30p.m. Prices vary at the different locations and group rates are available. For more information call 208-465-5654 in Nampa and 208-938-4993 in Meridian. But I think that the MAiZE is well worth the money and your time. Christa would appreciate it too.
Nicole Sharp (The Arbiter)