Megapumpkins ~ Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Most people in the Bay Area have heard of the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin festival, but to use an old saw, nobody goes there because it's way too crowded.

Another public pumpkin event happens a little earlier, the Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off. It's every year on Columbus Day, which isn't generally a holiday in California, but this year the Redwood City Schools took it off, so Nate and I went.

In today's news I see that the winner came from Washington State, and weighed 2,363 lbs, a new American Record. We are not the only country to hold this event, and this year's European championship went to a Belgian with a 1008 Kg pumpkin--pretty close, but 1008 Kg = 2222.26 lbs so we're still ahead. USA! USA! The European Pumpkin Festival does look pretty cool, though--check out the pumpkin boats.

Years ago I made an N Scale pumpkin patch, with a giant in the back of a truck:

Now it turns out I have a belated prototype.

I asked this guy if he was going to make a pie, and he said "lots of them!"

Down the coast, we passed the site of the ghost town of Purisima. Nothing remains of it except a cemetery, which before was always overgrown to the point of impassibility, but someone has cleared the underbrush.

A little farther is Arata Pumpkin Farm, where we navigated a hay-bale maze, twice. It's impressive. I wanted to put the theory to the test that a maze can be navigated by picking a direction to turn, left or right, and sticking to it consistently, but Nate found this strategy boring so we just wing'ed it (Note: if you want to try my theoretical approach, you need to make sure you are touching an outside wall when you start--if you decide to use it after wandering a maze randomly for a while, you might conceivably get stuck in a loop. Also don't try this in a maze with tunnels or bridges--it only applies to a strictly 2d maze).

I took this picture from the hill where we parked, and occasionally thought of using it as a map, but that would be cheating :)