LAFAYETTE — Hoosiers know how to celebrate fall and it always goes by too fast. So, on Inside Indy, we want to help you get out and enjoy some fall fun, at Exploration Acres, in Lafayette.
From racing pumpkins to making campfires, digging for gems and even firing corn five hundred feet from a cannon, Exploration Acres has it all.
Tim Fitzgerald, crafted his family’s land you see today.
“This is a great place to have just a really good family fun experience," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald says putting things together for families to come have fun bring him plenty of joy.
“It brings me a lot of joy. The reason why is that this is a family farm," Fitzgerald said. "My dad passed away in 2010 from cancer and he asked me to come up with something to re-purpose these old buildings that really weren’t useful for anything else. When I was a kid, we had cattle and hogs and chickens.”
He puts heart, sweat, and recycled farm tools into it.
“See, I had hair before I started, but it’s all gone now,” said Fitzgerald.
It’s a lot of work for one month of jam-packed fall activities, but it’s a slam-dunk for the whole family.
While there is a lot to see and do here, one of the main attractions is the corn maze. It is twenty-three acres worth of land, with ten miles worth of paths, and four different mazes.
Exploration Acres is memorable.
“In 2019, we were number one in the country, the year it was Purdue’s 150th anniversary," Fitzgerald said.
In 2018, Exploration Acres' corn maze honored the show Stranger Things. Within twenty-four hours, the video showed a quarter million views.
“In fact, my website kept crashing," Fitzgerald said. "So, I had to call Go Daddy and say what can we do to fix this, and they said well congratulations Mr. Fitzgerald, you have the problem every business in this country wants.”
The viral video made a busy year. According to Fitzgerald people visited from France, Italy and Pakistan that year.
He designs a different corn maze each time. In November of the year before, he sends the sketch to a company in Idaho which has the equipment to plant the corn.
It’s a family farm, with plans to expand the country food store and maximize fall fun for the Hoosier community.
You only have until the end of October to see Exploration Acres fall festivities. About 50-thousand people come to the corn maze, every year. This year’s Zombie maze is the 15th they’ve done since 2008.
It has one of the few corn mazes open at night, until 11 p.m.
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