Friday, October 30, 2009

Maized

One thing 'A' wanted to do during her vacation week was to go to Marini Farms and do the corn maze. It's 8 acres large and while it sounds as if it would be a little juvenile...it wasn't. Yes, there were parts of the process that were 'educate the children', but even that proved challenging in a maze aspect. The idea is to collect, on your score sheet, various farming related words and picture rubbings as you go through the maze. We weren't very interested in that other than the problem of finding them all (we didn't). It took us about 90 minutes to find our way through the maze. We collected about three quarters of the puzzle (words and pictures). We have decided that next year we'll do it again with more emphasis on game play, not just finding our way through.

After completing the maze, and on our way home (sort of), we took a trip to New England Bio Labs. Strange you think? You bet. New England Bio Labs does research/development/something else having to do with DNA, RNA, genomes and piles of stuff that I haven't a clue what on earth they are talking about. Anyway, I had been told that the grounds and buildings were really cool to take a look at...so we did...and they are. The property was evidently a large agricultural estate with buildings of brick and stucco. Those buildings have been preserved in their original form on the exterior, with interiors now devoted to offices and labs. In the midst is a large, all glass, multi storied contemporary building housing more research space. It has a three story, corner atrium filled with enormous tropical plants. On the property surrounding the facility are many metal sculptures.A horse grazing.A large bird befitting a scary movie.

Just in time for Halloween...a research lab and spooky creatures amid old, brick and vine covered buildings.

I will not be driving up there after dark.

2 comments:

Bernard said...

That building has so much appeal and character....but it looks deserted. All the windows are blacked out giving it an 'un-lived in' look.
Quite spooky but OK for Halloween.

deb said...

We'll be going back to take more of a look around and I'll take some more pictures of other buildings - including the new one. We felt somewhat intimidated hanging the camera out the window at stuff while seeing all the people inside the glass building who could obviously see us nosing around!