Halloween 2011 – Haunted Homes for Sale in Portland Oregon!
Pumpkin Ghost at Lee Farms
It’s October and Halloween is quickly approaching. Portland Metro has loads of places for Halloween fun, from pumpkin patches and corn mazes to frightful attractions that’ll scare the dickens out of the wee ones. Here are some suggestions and tips on how to stay safe and have a gruesome, ooops, awesome time.
In my opinion, it all starts with the pumpkin (hard to figure from a guy named “Jack”). Luckily, there are several farms that are a quick drive from Portland. I’ve been on enough family outings and school field trips to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, so here’s a couple of recommendations.
Happy Hayseed in the Haybale Tunnel
Lee Farms is great for little kids. They’ve got acres of pumpkins, haybale pyramids with tunnels, and really good sugar-cinnamon doughnuts and fresh-pressed cider. They have more than 20 varieties of pumpkins/gourds for carving, eating, and just plain decorating. The brilliant orange Cinderella wins best in show and the whitish-orange Long Island Cheese Wheel wins the best name prize. Lee’s staff is friendly and knowledgeable (you’d have to be to keep track of 20 types of pumpkins).
Kruger’s Farm Market and The Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island have great pumpkins, too. They cater to the little guys, but their corn mazes (we call it “maize”) are a hit with older kids. You can literally get lost in the corn. Click on the links to see great aerial shots of the mazes.
As for haunted attractions, it’s fun to get the blood moving around Halloween and Portland has a variety of eerie places. There’s Fright Town at Memorial Coliseum (click here for coupon for $10 off) and the Scream at the Beach (Jantzen Beach) to name a few. You might want to leave your costume behind, though, as it will impede your speedy getaway from demons, ghouls, and zombies (sounds like going shopping at Costco).
Cinderella and Her Pumpkin Wagon
Turning to safety, here’s a couple of websites that will help. The Center for Disease Control offers a variety of safety tips (reflective tape, scanning candy (and poaching the Reeses) before the kids eat it, etc.). The ubiquitous Dollar Tree offers a cornucopia of glow-sticks, flashlights, and reflective bags for the kiddos. They also have some reasonably priced mylar balloons for decorating.
A couple of recipes for those who like pumpkin soup and pumpkin seeds. I like my seeds sautéed in butter, but there’s a variety of healthier ways to cook them.
Happy Halloween (and Halloween Birthday to Grandma Lynda)!
