Bowden SunMaze

WHERE: range rd 14, bowden, ab

WHEN: august 7-october 14th, 11am-5pm, sunset hours on select thursdays and fridays, check sunmaze.ca for all live updates

PRICE: adults $9.00, students $6.50, 4 and under FREE

You’ve all seen it advertised online and if you are like me you’ve probably been wondering if the sun maze in all the photos you’ve seen on curiocity (Toronto, Calgary & Vancouver) is real. Once I saw the same photo on all three I’ve been trying frantically to find out if my drive out to the Bowden sunmaze will be worth the trip because there was no proper photos to prove me wrong. Just to be safe we waited a couple of weeks to let the flowers bloom. Sunflowers are a fall flower so I wasn’t holding my breath for it at the very start of august. We finally decided to take the road trip and check things out for ourselves to finally put my theories to bed once and for all. The farm is just an hour drive out of the city and with all the smoke we’ve been having in Alberta it was worth getting out of the eye of the storm so to speak. The moment we left the city the skies cleared up and we saw the sun again! We pulled into the farm and even for a weekday (I think it was Monday) it was pretty busy.

The farm that is open to the public is rather small but there is lots to do once you are here. Besides two separate fields of sunflowers (planted and blooming at separate times), there is also a corn maze, a tree maze, a you-pick vegetable and flower patch and a modest petting zoo with some chickens, a pony and a cute little goat. You can call ahead of time to check what veggies and fruit are available to be picked, but there is also a fridge pull of pre picked produce you can just grab on your way out. The farm is only open until 5 pm daily but for those who want to catch the fields during a beautiful sunset you still have one more opportunity this season on August 30th and 31st when they are open until sundown for all your photo taking needs.

The sunflowers are shorter this year because of a hail storm but it really doesn’t take away from how photogenic and beautiful they are, especially if you are lucky enough to be there with a blue sky.  Catch all live updates on their website at sunmaze.ca and be quick because if and once there is an early frost this means sunflower season is over. I absolutely love that we have more beautiful places like this popping up all around us, it is such a treat to spend the day outside surrounded by natural beauty and really no keepsake more valuable then walking away being able to capture that memory in a photograph. I hope you have as much fun as we did. We will be going back for the second bloom in the next week or two so hopefully we will see you there! xoxo