21st Century Pumpkin Patch

When I was in the first and second grades we took field trips to pumpkin patches in Half Moon Bay (kinda the pumpkin capital of the world). We would go out to a field and CUT OUR PUMPKINS OFF THE VINE. I remember this... I remember it being a beautiful, quiet, pastoral setting.

So of course, I envisioned this for C/D. No parking lot pumpkin patch for my monkeys. So on Sunday morning we drove to Half Moon Bay...usually about 45 minutes from our house. Things were great, until we got off the freeway. HMB is 6 miles off 280, and it took us 45 minutes to drive it. I had screwed up the dates and we had driven down on the day of the Art and Pumpkin Festival. UGH. According to the people at the pumpkin patches it is generally bad traffic every weekend in October, but I definitely picked one of the worst days to go.

So rather than go to the working farm/pumpkin patch 5 miles past HMB that we had researched, we stopped at one of the first ones. The patch itself was close to what I wanted...we had wheelbarrows, there were pumpkins of all types, and it wasn't too citified. Then we walked about 100 yards up to what can only be described as Halloween on Crack. There were bounce houses (why does EVERYTHING have to have a freakin' bounce house) pony rides, hay rides, a petting zoo, tons of "photo ops"---everything except a pumpkin patch on a working farm.

What has the world come to that even our pumpkin patches have gone Hollywood?

(And ya' like the hat Charlotte's wearing? I bought it to replace the purple stripe one she lost. She lost it while on the bus w/ C (babysitter) on Monday. I'm not even sure I paid the credit card bill for it yet.)