Navigating Leesburg's 14-Acre Maze: It's No Piece of Cake

As Leesburg celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, what better way to celebrate than with birthday cake? Not festive enough? How about a giant birthday cake carved into a 14-acre cornfield maze?

You've never seen a birthday cake with as many dead ends as the one at Temple Hall Farm Regional Park. From overhead, the corn maze design looks like a four-tier layer cake. At ground level, however, it just looks like cornstalks and confusion.

Thankfully, the designers don't expect visitors to navigate the course based on confectionery geography alone. Visitors can choose from six "passports," each containing 10 helpful trivia questions from a specific theme, including tiny tots (for little kids), Halloween, Leesburg and sports.

On a recent Saturday, a reporter chose the tiny tots passport for guidance: 1) What does a cow say? A. Baaaa (turn left); B. Quack (turn right); C. Moo (turn left).

And with that, the journey began to the left (right?).

Only moments in, the Dowloff family of Sykesville, Md., already sounded lost: "Are you on this path?" Tamara Dowloff called out, trying to reunite with sons Dustin, 15, and Bailey, 9. "Say beep every couple seconds!" Dustin was long gone, she soon learned, off attempting to lap his mother and younger brother before they could finish. But Dowloff had no fear: Bailey was on the case, blazing trails in every direction with the energy of a powered-up Pac-Man.

"He's a little divining rod," she explained. The course was now half completed thanks to Bailey's efforts. "You've got to follow the 9-year-olds," she added. "I was just sending him ahead and waiting."

Still, there was work to be done, and the final checkpoint was nowhere to be found. "I think we did this way; that's how we met you," said Cristina Rojas of South Riding, as she searched for the exit along with her mom, children (Catalina, 7, and Sebastian, 3) and her new allies, the Dowloffs.

Then, Tamara Dowloff's phone rang: It was speedy son Dustin, who was walking back through the course as a one-man search party. Moments later, the family emerged safely from the maze, an hour and 15 minutes after they started. Rojas, however, was undaunted. She hoped to return later in the month to try the farm's flashlight maze, which is open only at night. "I might try that one without the kids."

THE MAIZE AT TEMPLE HALL FARM REGIONAL PARK 15789 Temple Hall Lane, Leesburg. 703-779-9372 orhttp://www.nvrpa.org/parks/themaize/index.php. Open Fridays from 4 to 10 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Nov. 2. $10, $8 for ages 3 to 11 and seniors, free for kids 2 and younger. Night maze open Fridays and Saturdays; $8, $6 for kids and seniors. Barn-only admission is $5, free for kids 2 and younger, and seniors. Wagon rides are $2.