Ah, pumpkin season! That time of year when driving to Half Moon Bay involves lengthy waits while cars slowly pull in and out of three of the most popular pumpkin patches in the Bay Area - Lemos Farm, 4-Cs, and Pastorino - all of which converge on the same spot along Highway 92, slowing traffic to a crawl at best, a stand-still at worst.
In short, pumpkin patch hell.
Now lean in, and I'll tell you a secret:
There's a pumpkin patch that has half the crowds and twice the parking of those other, better known patches. It also offers much more to do, including a 2-acre hay maze, haunted barn, train rides, petting zoo, pony rides, and picnic areas. And you can reach it avoiding 92 altogether, taking an alternate scenic route through the redwood-dense back roads of Kings Mountain. Interested?
It's Arata Pumpkin Farm. The kids and I went today, finally exploring the pumpkin bliss that has been beckoning behind a huge guerilla (as seen from Highway 1) for years. We were not disappointed.
First, I should say that the the maze is serious. Like, get lost in for hours serious. I wouldn't want to go in there with a child younger than five, or with anyone who suffers from claustrophobia. We were fortunate. Just when I was beginning to despair (the kids were trusting that Mom knew what she was doing all along), I asked for help from three young boys who seemed to know what they were doing. They led us through, and through, and through, and through, and finally we emerged from the exit victorious."We try to make it fun," the one boy who seemed most at home there said. I'm guessing his family runs the place, but I'll never know for sure. Another family we had run into repeatedly in the maze later confessed they never made it out the exit. Not sure if they found their way back to the entry, or used one of the emergency exits. They had fun trying, though.
By contrast, the Haunted Barn, while fun, was not adult rated. Seven-year-old Esme cruised right through, undaunted by the spooky scenes set up in the dark. Emil got spooked, but he's easily spooked. The train ride was totally P rated (for preschool), being small, and running on a tiny track. That is one area where I felt a little nostalgic for Lemos Farm, and it's spooky train ride. But really, all the other things that Arata offers made up for that. The pony ride rocked, the petting zoo was fun enough, and we picked out some pumpkins to take home and carve (it is a pumpkin patch, after all!), but I will say this: in the end, it was all about the maze.
Arata Pumpkin Farm is located at 185 Verde Road in Half Moon Bay, and will be open this Friday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. (can you say night labyrinth?), and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can pay for activities a la carte, or do what we did and buy a pass that allows you to do everything ($20 for kids, $15 for adults, although they didn't charge me, since I had to accompany the children on everything anyway).
How to get there via back roads:
From the Peninsula, just follow Kings Mountain Road off of Highway 84 in Woodside. It winds up to Skyline, where it turns into Tunitas Creek Road, and winds on downs the mountain. Turn right at the Tunitas Creek cut off near the bottom of the hill, and it will take you right where you want to be on Verde Road. It's not a super fast drive, but I can almost promise there will be no traffic, and the drive is draw-dropping beautiful.
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