Summer of Awesome - Saunders Farm

by Lynn

A few days ago we spent the day at Saunders Farm. I wasn't going to bother to write about it, even though it totally won the Most Awesome Award for the Summer of Awesome last year. I'd already written gobs about it, I'd gushed even, and it would all be more of the same.

In fact, we almost didn't go at all, because I thought to myself, sure, it's awesome, but how can it be as good as last year? And we've seen it all, and done it all, so is it just going to be boring this year?

And the answer to that is NO. No, not boring at all.

In fact, EVEN MORE AWESOME.

We get there, and once we get past the awesome climbing structure at the entrance, and take an awesome wagon ride, we enter the main part of the park and we see this:

Those are huge pillow jumpers. They are like enormous trampolines, and oh my lands, are they ever fun. Adults can go on them too, and I got some serious air. Kids can jump, or just sit and go along for the ride. They are AWESOME.

Then we climbed up the big tower to look out over the mazes and saw these:

Pedal cars! New this year! And they were fun. So much fun. And we didn't even have to wait. And we got to ride them as long as we wanted. AWESOME.

And! Then!

There's another new display area, the Saunders Mine. You can buy a bag of dirt with semi-precious stones in it, then use a constantly running stream to actually sift for your stones. Now, it did cost extra, which always is annoying. And usually I would have said no. But I thought to myself, I can either spend the rest of the day listing to three kids whine the light fantastic about how they totally missed out on the best event ever, or I can just cough up the moola now and become the Best Mom Ever.

Easy choice.

My kids could not get enough of the mine. They love, love, loved finding their own rocks. Then they spent another hour just watching other kids sift, and playing in the stream, and checking other pans for pay dirt. It was AWESOME.

And there's still the mazes, ten in all:

And the splash pad:

And the myriad play structures:

And the giant slide, and the discovery barn, and the ice cream, and did I mention the jumping things?

My kids declared it to be the Best Day Ever (although truth be told, I've heard that a LOT this summer, which I must say is very gratifying). We were there for five full hours, and we didn't even do everything that was available - not to mention that the kids could have easily spent another hour just jumping. The thing about Saunders Farm is that it's really different from other attractions - and not just different from stuff in Ottawa, but unique in the world. And that's pretty cool.

I do believe that Saunders Farm is going to win the Second Annual Summer Of Awesome, as well.

Lynn is mom to three tombliboos, age 8, 6, and 4, and blogs over at Turtlehead.