Yesterday Rich and I left the semi-done upgrade on the computer (yes, I know I need to finish that story. Not tomorrow, though, since I'm going a-whaling!) and headed out North. He hoped to see some of the water works, where the Sutter Bypass comes into the Sacramento and the Yolo Bypass leaves. I had a map of the weirs and shunts earlier, but without a couple of days warning to find it, it was long gone. Besides, I was looking for the scanner software. So we decided to explore up the Garden Highway, up the east side of the River. I wasn't aware that the Feather comes into the Sacramento so close to town, only about 10 miles away. The drive along the levee is scenic but bumpy and narrow and certainly dangerous at any speed. We crossed the Feather on highway 99 and continued north till it met 113 when we headed south again toward Woodland. We crossed the Sutter Bypass, all dry now, and harvested. (These are flood-control channels to allow the massive amount of runoff water to get past Sacramento to the Delta. There was a time when the River meandered back and forth across the valley, but for some reason people don't like that behavior.) We crossed the Sacramento, much smaller before its confluence with the Feather, at Knight's Landing. There we spent a good amount of time looking for the big covered bridge, which is actually at Knight's Ferry close to Modesto. Oh, well. And so south to Woodland. We skirted the town looking for the maze, and found it just about the time it opened.

This company plants mazes in a number of agricultural places. That is, they plant cornfields and then cut mazes into them. The mazes usually resemble the state they are in. We saw some other pictures there, and Colorado's had a stegosaur! Not that it matters on the ground. Rich and I got lost in the miner's pick, and again with the "Y". This picture shows the two bridges they put in to get from one section to the next, the tiny white patches. I didn't know about them, so when I tried to plan on the picture, I kept finding dead ends.
We were warned to avoid taking the short cuts, unless we were really frustrated, and sent off to the left. The arctic wind has been howling the last two days, and a lot of the corn has blown down. I don't know if they will be able to keep it open till Hallowe'en, as planned. Some of the ears were showing, and boy did the corn look delicious!
The way to get through is to work up the side, across the middle, and back to the entry, but behind the trailer. From there it's fairly easy to find the first bridge. You stand at the top, look at the map, and plan how to get to the second bridge, which is near the star. We could hear the freeway traffic, which helped. (This must be really spooky at night!) The plan was to get to the top, work across, then down to the star. I kept looking for the flag, but the corn was as high as an elephant's eye, and you can't see anything. However, we found a sign pointing to a rest area, and there was the bridge! We looked at that map, then, and planned which point of the star to leave on and how to work over to the exit. We got through in 45 minutes, 1.6 miles. I'm sure the ticket- taker didn't believe that we did the whole thing, no shortcuts. Hey, we survived Hampton Court, we can do this!

A fun day.