Credit to Michaela Manfull

The Broemmelsiek Park Crop Maze is located behind the Agriculture Educational Garden, which is a community garden that donates all of its crops to people in need.

To many people, journalism sounds like an easy, fun class to take. While we have a lot of fun, it is by no means easy. One amazing example of this is the time two staffers, us, were sent to an empty and underwhelming corn maze a 25-minute drive from school for a story. This is what that story became.

Driving through never-ending hills to get to a sketchy park with no people and a minor amount of dead corn with paths through it in the middle of nowhere is a great way to spend your Monday afternoon. To some people, Highway D isn’t in the middle of nowhere, it’s their commute to work or school, but to a new driver who tends to stick to Highways 94 and 364, it felt like it was across the country.

We realized halfway through Broemmelsiek Park that we should’ve mapped the directions to the maze itself, instead of just to the entrance of the park, but it was too late to back out at that point because there wasn’t enough service for Google Maps to load. As we drove through the park, we saw no other signs of life aside from one park ranger car and a person or two at one of the many campgrounds we drove by.

At some point, we did stop by an empty campsite to take a picture of one of the park maps, which would’ve been very helpful had we known where in the park we were at the time. When we finally found the “Crop Maze” behind the Agriculture Education Garden, it did not seem to be much to look at, but upon further investigation, it really didn’t get much better.

As we entered the corn maze, we immediately started searching for a way out. When we reached a dead end, instead of turning around, we cut through the stalks onto a different path, further immersing ourselves in the corn experience.

To quote a video we took while wandering the Crop Maze, “We found a dead end, but we’re not dead yet.”

After not very long, we somehow made our way back out of the maze after seeing soybeans and cows and deciding to turn around. Then we went back in to see if our second experience was any better than the first. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t.

Overall, we recommend that everyone visit the Broemmelsiek Park corn maze, especially if we want them to disappear under mysterious circumstances. Plus, it’s free.