By Marlena Ballinger

Suter Produce has been creating a corn maze since 1999, and I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to experience this northwest Ohio attraction. I decided to tackle the corn maze this year with my family in tow, including two very young grandchildren.

We entered the maze with excitement and were surprised to find there is a scavenger hunt as you go through. They hand you a long piece of cardboard with fill-in-the-blank clues. When you find the clue, you stamp your card.

Since this year’s maze theme was zoo animals, the stamps were all of zoo animals. I quickly realized that each stamp was within that animal in the maze.

Let me just say, I am the most directionally challenged individual you will ever meet. If it weren't for Google Maps, I’d be driving in circles everywhere I go. Once we were deep within that maze, I quickly became reliant on my daughter’s boyfriend to lead us through. How he was reading that picture of zoo animals as a map still remains a mystery.

“Hannah, can you imagine if it was just you and I going through this maze?” I asked my daughter.

“We’d have to call life flight,” she replied.

There was a halfway point exit if you wanted to leave the challenge unfinished, but I’m not a quitter. So onward we went, with my daughter’s boyfriend in the lead.

It took us about two hours to complete the maze, but we decided that it probably would have been a good idea to send the grandkids out with Grandpa at the halfway point

Overall, I’m so sad that I waited so long to experience this gem hidden in Putnam County. Jerry Suter puts so much work into creating the maze each year, and as I experienced his artwork, I kept thinking how difficult it must be to go through and cut the corn down in just the right places to create the maze.

We also discovered how affordable the entire experience was for my family. I encourage anyone who wants to experience a corn “sandbox,” field tile slides, hopper wagon basketball, a pumpkin launch, a real-live pumpkin patch, hayrides, apple cider slushies (YUM!!), apple cider donuts and kettle corn to make the trip to 4687 Road R, Pandora, Ohio…and don’t worry, if you do get lost in that maze, they have employees stationed within to help you through.