Sunflower Maze in Paris

Have you heard of a sunflower maze before???

Turns out they're just as beautiful as you'd imagine.

I heard about this Sunflower Maze at L & A Family Farms in Paris, IL this time last year, but we weren't able to go.  It's only open for a week or two every summer or as long as the sunflowers last.  It was on my radar for this summer and I jumped on the chance to go on the coolest day of the week.  It's a 30 minute drive from my house and it was totally worth it.  I'm not typically a huge sunflower lover, but these blooms were GORGEOUS.

I snapped pictures through the whole maze and I even caught my husband taking a few pictures.  So you know it must have been beautiful :)

There were dead ends and Olive thought it was so funny to walk down and realize you couldn't go that way.  She'd just laugh and turn around.  The sunflowers were all way over the kid's heads, but the adults could just see over the top of them.  It was fun to see where other adults were in the maze and kind of gauge where you were headed.  Now on to the sunflower picture overload - sorry, not sorry :)

We visited their little family farm store, played with the friendly farm dogs and road the tractor down to the sunflower field.  It was HOT, but oh so fun.  I brought our small stroller with a sunshade for Fletcher and pushed him through the maze.  I should have put sunscreen on all of us, but I forgot.  I did pack my backpack with snacks and drinks for everyone and that was a nice treat after the maze while we were waiting on the tractor to come back.

Pulling up to the fields:

We let Olive lead the way and she thought the giant flowers were fascinating!  They were nearly twice as tall as her in some spots.  It almost didn't feel like real life because the skies were so blue, perfectly puffy clouds and gorgeous flowers as far as you could see.  I'm SO GLAD we made the trip and hope to make it a yearly tradition.

Fletcher very happily road along in his stroller.  I was a little nervous about how he'd do after he didn't really enjoy our strawberry picking day earlier this summer.  He did great!  He was in the shade and loved touching all the sunflower leaves.  He got out to run around a bit and then headed back to his stroller.  I was thankful for the dry fields so we could easily push the stroller.

Olive kept yelling: THIS IS THE COOLEST THING EVER!!

 

Sweaty parent selfie :)

We made it to about the middle of the maze and made a family decision to head back to the start.  We figured it was better to enjoy ourselves through half of the maze rather than push it too hard and end up with kids in tears at the end.  Good choice!  We all left with smiles on our faces :)

 

We made it to about the middle of the maze and made a family decision to head back to the start.  We figured it was better to enjoy ourselves through half of the maze rather than push it too hard and end up with kids in tears at the end.  Good choice!  We all left with smiles on our faces :)

Real life:
Fletcher was hangry after all that strolling through the sunflowers so he's shoving pretzels in his face here.  Olive is sad because she tripped and fell as we were walking out of the maze.  You can walk to the fields, but we were so thankful for the tractor ride on the hot day.  I'd definitely say it's too long of a walk for little kids.

We headed to the farm store to get some sunflowers to take home with us.  The store sold all kinds of meats, sandwiches, honey and jellies.  The flowers were $1 each and they were huge.  Both kids were super interested in them and I was happy that I had a vase heavy enough to hold them when we got home.

Thanks for the memories, Sunflower Maze!!