Yesterday we made our annual visit to the fantastic Tolay Fall Festival at Tolay Lake Regional Park outside of Petaluma. The festival, held over two long weekends in October, is the successor to the popular pumpkin patch held at the park's former incarnation as Cardoza Ranch. The Tolay Fall Festival is much more than a pumpkin patch, however. It's an old-fashioned, down-to-earth celebration of fall with tons of fun activities for the whole family, and one of our favorite fall happenings in the Bay Area. It's a wonderful autumn event that has plenty to do for kids of all ages.
Of course there's a pumpkin patch—it's huge and located way out in the back 40 of the park, and you need to take a tractor-drawn hay ride to get there. But there are also plenty of other other attractions, exhibits, and hands-on activities. Our children enjoyed making old-fashioned corn husk dolls, carding wool, spinning yarn, and dipping candles, and more.
There's also an animal area with the opportunity to pet some friendly donkeys and goats, scarecrow-making, a world championship pumpkin-seed-spitting contest, lawn games, a giant straw maze, a demonstration of old farm equipment and early gas engines, a firefighting display, archery for kids and grownups, an astronomy display, a Native American village, and more. This year, kids also have a chance to try out their casting skills with instructors from the Leland Fly Fishing Ranch in Sonoma.
Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, and there's so much family fun to be had at this time of year. Find the Halloween event that's right for you! We'll keep updating our list of Halloween events in Marin as we find more this fall. If you have an event you'd like to see added to the list, 
Boo! Come get a jump on Halloween at the 27th annual 
