Hooray for Fall! Fall is one of our favorite times of year in Chapel Hill NC. The weather is beautiful, the Fall colors are breath-taking, and every year we look forward to visiting our favorite local North Carolina pumpkin patches, farms, and corn mazes. (See our CHillKids.com Chapel Hill Pumpkin Patch Guide to read about some of our favorites.)
Yesterday we had a great time working our way around (and around) the AMAZING corn field maze at McKee’s Corn Maze (on Cedar Creek Farm on Kiger Rd. in Rougement, NC, near Hillsborough, NC.) McKee’s Cornfield Maze offers a wonderful way to spend a Fall day of family fun outdoors. The maze includes a 12-acre cornfield maze, AND a 2-acre children’s maze. Every year the McKee family creates a beautiful farm image that is then cut into the rows of corn to create a gigantic aerial-view living work of art. From an aerial view the maze this year features a tractor and the words Fall Family Fun; when you run around inside the maze you can figure out your bearings based on your mental image of the cornfield’s design. Going along a circular path we realized we were in the tractor’s wheel.
In prior years, we explored the 2-acre children’s maze (instead of the 12-acre maze), as the children’s maze is the perfect length for families with little ones. There are checkpoints hidden along the maze where you can punch the next number on your maze card – great fun for everyone to seek and discover all of the punch-hole stations! There are signs along the way based on the alphabet to help you keep your bearings in the children’s maze. There are more signs along the cornfield path including pictures of geometric shapes, colors, and other cheerful signs for children to discover along the maze paths.
However yesterday we ventured into the main cornfield maze, with our five children (ages pre-school to 6th grade), and split up into two groups to find all of the punch hole stations among the 12 ACRES of cornfield paths. My husband used his GPS to track his distance/time, and he logged in over 5 miles, in about an hour and a half. (He did a lot of back-tracking rounding up pairs of our kids back into our two groups.) We all had a great time searching for the punch-hole stations hidden in recessed areas of the maze, and meeting lots of other nice people along the way. My six-year-old son especially loved to escort people to a particularly hard-to-find station that he had discovered.
After we found all of the cornfield maze stations, we went back to the tent area and the kids played on the playground, in the sandbox, and visited the goats, donkeys and other farm animal friends. (They also have picnic tables under the shady trees near the playground area.)
Perhaps BEST OF ALL, my husband pushed each of the kids in turn on the rope swing in the playground area. Our kids look forward to visiting McKee’s Corn Maze every year, and the rope swing at McKee’s is one of their all-time favorite swings. (As always, an adult should supervise the swinging. Rope swings can swing close to the tree(s) so we don’t let our kids push one another on the swing. Instead we do the pushing on rope swings.)
The tent area features farm-fresh produce and goods, beautiful PUMPKINS, and, last but not least, everyone’s favorite freshly scooped Mapleview Farm Ice cream! mmmmmm …. Pumpkin Pie ice cream at the end of a wonderful Fall day at McKee’s Cornfield Maze. Perfect!
McKee’s Cornfield Maze is located at Cedar Creek Farm
5011 Kiger Rd
Rougemont, NC 27572
919-732-8065
Visit McKee’s Cornfield Maze online for hours, admission, and more info.
Have fun!

















