Alberta - Day 5

This was a pretty quiet day in Calgary.  We discussed various options with the kids and eventually decided on a simple trip to the Calgary Corn Maze, primarily because it had a mini-golf course, and the boys really wanted to play a round, especially after our round at Rowan's Ravine got cancelled due to the weather.

The weather intervened today as well, but not until after our round of mini-golf (and the subsequent hole 15 meltdown by one child) was finished.  We arrived just before lunch and spent some time letting the kids go on the various slides and jumping pillows.  The corn maze is basically Happy Hollow on steroids, for those of you reading from the Regina area.  They have a bunch of picnic tables setup, so we stopped and had lunch before continuing on.

The actual corn maze is huge - it takes up an entire quarter section and this year it is in the shape of Superman bursting through a corn field.  The corn isn't fully grown this early in the year, as it ranges from 4 feet to 6 feet high, so at times I could easily see over into the other areas.  We started off on one section and got through the bottom left corner of the maze but managed to miss the one path that lead on, so ended up back at the start.  Luckily, that was enough maze for everyone, as I'm not certain the big maze is really setup for young kids.  In fact, they have a smaller maze for the younger people.

So, the kids decided at that time to go mini-golfing.  As we were making our way through the course, you could see a huge pile of dark black clouds away to the north, but as we played and watched, it really seemed like the storm was mostly moving east and would miss our location.  After finishing the corn maze, I was at the van dealing with a disobedient child, while Sandra headed to the bathrooms and to the start of the smaller maze.  I watched the clouds and realized that the one edge of the storm was definitely going to hit the farm, so I phoned Sandra and told her to come to the van where we could wait out the rain.

A very short time later, I saw a bunch of people near the entrance start screaming and running and wondered what was going on.  That was followed by a bang on the top of the van as the hail started, so I drove over to where Sandra and the other boys were and got them in the van, where we waited out the storm.  There was a bunch of hail to start - about the size of marbles and then about a five minute downpour before the sun came out and everything was fine again.  We briefly discussed going through the smaller maze, but it is in a field and everything would have been super muddy, so instead we drove back into Calgary and went to the LEGO store.

All the kids found ways to spend all of their money, while I filled a bunch of pick a brick containers with the pieces I wanted, built some minifigures and discussed Brickspo with the employees.  A few of them had friends that had gone to Brickspo, so they knew all about it, which was cool.  Then it was time to head through the rush hour traffic to get back for supper.