Our October: The Pumpkin Regatta, the Haunt Map, and the Haunted Garage in Our Driveway
Fall here is short and it rains, so you do not get to do everything. You get about six good weekends, two of which will be a washout, and then it is November and you are wondering where October went.
So we stopped trying to do all of it. We have a handful of things we come back to, one we have only done twice and loved both times, and one my husband has been lobbying for that we are finally doing this year.
Here is the list, what it costs, and what I have learned the hard way about when to go. Everything below was checked in late September 2026. Farm hours and prices move, sometimes mid-season, so click through before you drive out.
Hoffman Farms, Beaverton. This is our patch.
22242 SW Scholls Ferry Rd, Beaverton. 503-628-5418.
Open Wednesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm, through 29 October. (Their own site says Tuesday through Sunday, so it's worth a call before a Tuesday drive.)
It started as the close one. It stayed our patch because it is genuinely lovely.
Entry is free. Parking is free. You can turn up on a Thursday afternoon with no plan and no tickets and walk out having spent eleven dollars, and some Octobers that is exactly what you need.
The corn maze is $6 and required for anyone 3 and up. It is 10 acres and takes about an hour if you commit, considerably longer if you are with someone who insists they know the way. There is a little train, the Scholls Valley Railroad, that runs the fields every fifteen minutes or less, and adults can ride it too, which I mention because a surprising number of people assume they cannot.
The market is the part I did not expect to love. Snacks, treats, farm pies, cider donuts, and Barn Door Brewing for the grownups Friday through Sunday. There is a BBQ food truck those same days, 11am to 3pm, and live music on Saturday and Sunday afternoons through October.
And the pumpkins are not just orange. They have more than twenty varieties in different colors, sizes and textures, including the warty ones, which are objectively the best ones and I will not be taking questions.
The real reason we keep going back: they are family owned, and they donate to our elementary school's silent auction every single year. Nobody makes them do that. When a local business shows up for your kids' school without being asked, you buy your pumpkins there. That is just how it works.
And mark 23 October. They run Spooky Night, 5pm to 7pm, free, with costumes, trick-or-treating and train rides. It is the gentlest Halloween event on this list and it is where I would send you if your kids are little.
The Pumpkin Regatta, Tualatin. The best free day in October.
Sunday 18 October, 10am to 4pm. Lake at the Commons, 8325 SW Nyberg St, Tualatin. Free.
If you have never been: people grow pumpkins the size of a car, hollow them out, climb inside, and race them across a lake. In costume. That is the actual event. I am not embellishing.
We have been twice, both times to cheer for a friend who grew a giant one, carved it out, and got in it. Watching somebody you know paddle a vegetable across a man-made lake in a costume is a specific kind of joy and I recommend it to everyone.
The races run in heats through the afternoon, and half the fun is the themes people commit to. There is a kids costume contest too. In between there is pumpkin bowling, pumpkin golf, pumpkin checkers, carving demos, stilt walkers, a marching band, and a selfie station with the giants that won the weigh-off.
Most of it is free, which for a day this well run is a little hard to believe.
Park at the free shuttle lots. They run from Kaiser Permanente and Bellagio's Pizza, and there is free bike valet. Parking at the Commons itself on regatta day is a situation, and the shuttle takes about as long as circling does.
The haunt map, which is free and which almost nobody knows about
This is my favorite thing on the list and it costs nothing.
The Northwest Haunters Association keeps a haunt map of home haunts across Oregon and Washington. Not the commercial attractions. Actual houses, where somebody has spent six weekends and their own money turning their front yard into something.
Some are a few well-placed skeletons. Some have fog, animatronics and a soundtrack, and you will sit in your car with the engine off for ten minutes.
We drive it every year. It is the cheapest night out in October, the kids are strapped in, there is no line for anything, and you can bail whenever somebody gets tired. Put the map on your phone, pick a loop, bring hot chocolate, go slow.
Our house is on the map too.
We have skeletons of every size, a spooky tree, goblins, a haunted pumpkin head, giant spiders, and an animatronic werewolf that has made more than one adult flinch. Matt adds something new every year, which is either a wonderful quality in a husband or a storage problem, depending on the month you ask me. Everything goes up by the end of September.
And on Halloween we run a haunted garage. That is the main event around here. If you are driving the map on the 31st, come find us.
A small ask on behalf of everyone else on that map: drive slowly, keep your headlights out of people's windows, and do not park in somebody's driveway to get a photo. These are homes, not venues. The whole thing works because everyone on the map is being neighborly, and it stays that way as long as the people driving it are too.
The Bella Organic haunted maze, Sauvie Island. Read the age line first.
16205 NW Gillihan Rd, Portland. About 35 minutes from Beaverton, and worth saying plainly: this one is not in Washington County, and it is not a daytime family outing.
Opens Saturday 26 September, then runs every Friday and Saturday night in October, and not on Halloween itself. Last night is 30 October. 6:30pm to 10pm.
Pricing climbs as Halloween gets closer: $35 on 26 Sept and 2 to 3 Oct, $40 on 9, 16 and 23 Oct, $45 on 10, 17, 24 and 30 Oct. A Fast Pass to skip the line is $10 more. Bring cash. The booth is cash only and the ATM line on a Saturday is its own haunted experience.
The maze takes twenty to thirty minutes. There are zombies, there are ghouls, and there is at least one person with a chainsaw who has clearly been waiting all night for someone exactly like you.
We went last year and it was one of the best nights of the month. Quinn brought a friend, they screamed the entire way through, and they have talked about it ever since. That is the correct outcome.
But the age rule is real and I am not going to bury it: no children 5 and under, and the farm does not recommend it for anyone under 13. Under 13 has to have a paying adult with them. If your kids are little, do Spooky Night at Hoffman instead and come back to this in a few years. You will know when they are ready, and so will they.
30 October is their costume party with no farm admission fee, so you only pay for activities.
The 99W Drive-In, Newberg. The one we are finally doing this year.
Matt has been talking about this for two years and I have run out of reasons to say no.
The 99W Drive-In in Newberg has been family owned since 1953 and is in its 72nd season, which makes it older than almost everything else on this list by several decades. In the fall they run old-school horror double features, and the week I was writing this it was Dracula (1931) followed by Frankenstein (1931), which is exactly the right kind of scary for a car full of people in blankets.
Adults $10, kids 6 to 11 $5, under 5 free, and a single-occupant car is $15, which tells you everything about who this place is built for. Box office opens at 6:30pm.
Their schedule changes week to week and they do not publish October in advance, so check the site the same week you want to go, and call 503-538-2738 if you want to know how late in the season they are running.
Bring blankets. It gets genuinely cold out there by the second feature, and there is no fixing that from inside a car.
The other patches, and what they actually cost
We go to Hoffman most, but these three are all good and each is better than the others at something.
Lee Farms, Tualatin. 21975 SW 65th Ave. Open 19 September through 31 October, Monday to Saturday 9am to 6pm, Sunday 9am to 5pm. Halloween runs 9am to 4pm with activities stopping at 3:30.
The clearest pricing of any farm here. Monday to Wednesday it is $9.25 general admission and $16.25 for the activity wristband. Thursday to Sunday it is $16.25 and $26.25. A family season pass is $151.30. Admission alone covers the animals, the hayride, the corn maze and the playground. The wristband adds the slides, the bounce pillow, the jump pad and the barrel wagon. Parking is free. No pets, ADA service dogs only.
That weekday gap is the biggest one anywhere on this list. Seven dollars a head between a Wednesday and a Thursday, and it is a completely different place on a weekday morning.
Roloff Farms, Hillsboro. 23985 NW Grossen Dr. 2 October through 31 October, Fridays through Sundays only, 10am to 5pm, no entry after 4pm, closing at 3pm on Halloween.
General admission $20, or $26 for the combo that adds the wagon tour and the train ride, which are the two things people drive out to Helvetia for. Two and under free. There is a 10% early bird discount through 30 September, and buying at the gate instead of online adds $2 per ticket. If you already know you are going, book it now.
Red Berry Barn, Sherwood. 19200 SW Chapman Rd. Harvest Festival 19 September through 31 October, open every day in October, 9am to 6pm.
They price by unlimited access rather than admission plus wristband, tiered by day and time, with a weekday morning rate that is one of the better full-access deals on the westside. Call 503-925-1700 for current pricing.
If you genuinely just want a pumpkin
Then skip all of it.
The Beaverton Farmers Market runs Saturdays 8:30am to 1:30pm at 12375 SW 5th St through 21 November, and October is when it is at its best. Winter squash, apples, cider and pumpkins from the same growers who supply the patches, with no gate and no wristband.
You will spend under twenty dollars and be home by ten. Some years that is the right call and there is no shame in it.
The free version of fall
Not everything in October needs a ticket. Three places we keep going back to:
Cooper Mountain Nature Park in Beaverton, for oak woodland and a view west across the valley that is worth the climb back up.
Tualatin Hills Nature Park, for a flat paved loop that works with a stroller and with a kid who has opinions about walking.
The Fanno Creek Trail, which threads through Beaverton and Tigard and is the easiest place to watch fall actually happen without driving anywhere.
All three are free, and none of them require you to decide anything in advance, which in October is its own kind of luxury.
Halloween week
Hoffman's Spooky Night is 23 October, 5pm to 7pm, free. Costumes, trick-or-treating, train rides. Little kids.
Bella Organic's costume party is 30 October, no farm admission, activities only. Big kids and adults.
The haunt map is best the last week of October, when everyone has finished building and the timers are all switched on.
On Halloween itself, Lee Farms runs 9am to 4pm with activities ending at 3:30, and Roloff closes at 3pm. Both are good morning stops if you want the day to start somewhere other than your own living room. And our garage will be open that night.
What I actually tell people
Go on a weekday morning.
That is the whole trick and it is worth more than any coupon. The price drops at almost every farm on this list, the parking is not a situation, the corn maze is not a queue, and the person selling you donuts has time to talk to you. A Tuesday in early October at Lee Farms and a Saturday in late October at Lee Farms are two different experiences at two different prices, and only one of them is the one people complain about afterward.
If weekdays are impossible, go the first two weekends of October instead of the last two. The weekend before Halloween is the busiest afternoon of the season at every single one of these places.
And buy online. Every farm here is cheaper or easier if you do, and a couple of them charge you for the privilege of deciding at the gate.
While you are thinking about fall
The other thing October is good for is the boring stuff, and I say that as someone who has watched a lot of gutters fail in the first real storm. If you have not done the seasonal pass on your house yet, my Fall Home Maintenance Checklist for Pacific Northwest Homeowners is fifteen things, most of them an afternoon, and it will save you a phone call in November.
And if you are new to this side of the county and still working out where things are, What I Love About Sexton Mountain Neighborhood is my own corner of it.
One question before you go
What did I miss?
Somebody is going to tell me I left off the patch their family has gone to for fifteen years, and I want to know about it. Reply and tell me. I will add it, and I will probably go.
And if your house is on the haunt map too, tell me that as well. I will come and see it.
If there is something else on your mind this fall, the kind of thing that is not really about pumpkins, you can ask me that too. One question is a fine reason to reach out and it does not have to turn into anything bigger than a question.
Warmly,
Tiffanie
Tiffanie Danley
Licensed Realtor in Oregon | Real Broker
Oregon License 201206631
P: 503-453-6580
IG: @tiffaniedanley
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