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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sunday stroll includes dead ends


Tanner Rawlins, 10, uses a map to lead his mother, Karen Rawlins,  and their neighbor Joe Ledford through the Clear Channel Amaizing Corn Maze in Hauser on Sunday. Below, Dan Shears, of Moscow, Idaho, tries to get his bearings inside the maze.
 (Photos by Holly Pickett / The Spokesman-Review)

Ten-year-old Tanner Rawlins had two words to describe his 45-minute wandering through the Amaizing Corn Maze of Hauser.

“It is amazing. Like they said. And it’s confusing. We were lost most of the time,” said Rawlins, a fifth-grader from Richland enjoying a Sunday stroll through the maze with his mother, Karen Rawlins, of Cheney.

For the fourth year, broadcast company Clear Channel Communications is running the maze, which covers 12.7 flat acres north of Interstate 90 just east of State Line.

Planted in the spring and carved into a maze in late September, the attraction is expected to draw about 18,000 paying customers by the time it closes Oct. 29.

Darryll House, a volunteer who ventured into the maze Sunday, carried a map with him as he navigated the middle section, carved into the shape of a zebra when seen from above. Two other sections are shaped like a horse and monkey.

“I’m not a maze person,” said House, whose daughter is a gymnast at University High School. Her team and six other groups receive donations from maze ticket sales. “To do well (in getting through it), you need a good sense of direction and the ability to discern this map, which I don’t have,” said House.

Doug Cooper, one of three workers hired to manage the maze, said crowds pick up Oct. 19, when the fourth section – the haunted maze – opens. He hires area actors and others to portray ghouls, menacing movie bad guys and witches. The actors hide inside the maze and become part of the attraction, said Cooper.

“Teenagers really like to come out then,” he added. “Especially at night. It’s a good way to enjoy being with others.” The final six days of the maze run Oct. 24 through Oct. 29. Until then it’s open only on weekends.

Maze trekker Jody Panatonni, of Spokane, survived her first trip through a corn maze on Sunday. “It really was fun. It’s a way to get out of the house and walk around outdoors,” she said.

“And it wasn’t cold. Once you’re in there, it’s fairly warm because of all the stalks around you.”

The carefully carved maze paths are the result of old-fashioned tractor blades combined with a GPS-equipped laptop computer.

The southern Idaho company that cuts the maze, MazePlay.com, sent a driver and tractor to Hauser about three weeks ago. According to Cooper, the cutter’s tractor has a laptop computer with a GPS unit and software that can map maze patterns on the screen.

His first step is walking to the four corners of the proposed maze site and marking the exact locations on his laptop, using the global positioning satellite unit.

At that point, the corn is nearly ripe with stalks about 7 feet tall.

The cutter then drives the tractor to the spot on the edge of the maze that will become the entrance and exit. He clicks on the computer program using the global positioning satellite. That mark becomes the tractor’s computer-mapping starting point.

“And the driver does all this in the dark,” Cooper said. “That’s just the way he does it.”

Based on whichever maze design has been chosen, the computer plots out the twists and turns through the corn. The computer tells the cutter exactly how far to drive forward, left or right and when to turn.

“It’s pretty amazing. If you could see it from the air, you’d know it could never be done by hand,” Cooper said. “They had to use something to get it cut into those shapes.”