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This weekend we finally made it to the Tolay Fall Festival on Tolay Lake Regional Park outside of Petaluma. This annual festival, held over two long weekends in October, is the successor to the popular pumpkin patch held at the site's former incarnation as Cardoza Ranch. Tolay Fall Festival is much more than a pumpkin patch, however. It's a down-to-earth celebration of fall with tons of fun activities for the whole family.

Of course there's a pumpkin patch—it's 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 other attractions, exhibits, and hands-on activities. Our children enjoyed making old-fashioned corn husk dolls and dipping candles, and felting wool. There's also an animal area with the opportunity to pet some friendly Boer goats, scarecrow-making, a pumpkin-seed-spitting contest, lawn games, a straw maze, a demonstration of old farm equipment and early gas engines, a firefighting display, a Native American village, and more.