Littleton – Erin Gacnik makes an unlikely lion, with her ruddy apple cheeks peeking out from underneath the fringed hood of her lion costume.
But she’s got the hunting thing down.
Sunday morning, Erin, all of 18 months old, weeble-wobbled her way toward something shiny and orange and flopped her hands on top of it as if to lay claim to the pumpkin, even though it weighed nearly as much as she did. Hunting, Erin knows, is about playing to your strengths, so she promptly busted out the best weapon in her lion’s repertoire.
She looked up with an angelic grin, as if to say, “Please, mom, can I take this one too?”
Patty Gacnik, Erin’s mom, just laughed.
“She already picked out a big one today,” Patty said.
Sunday was the last day of hunting season at the Denver Botanic Gardens’ pumpkin festival near Chatfield State Park. Kids who dressed in costumes got in free. And so a horde of princesses, Jake Plummers, Darth Vaders and lions, like Erin, picked through the 10-acre patch looking for that one perfect pumpkin – or those nine or 10 perfect pumpkins.
By the end of the two-day festival, about 25,000 people had trooped through the patch of about 17,000 pumpkins, all grown on site.
Ken McMillen, who came to the patch with his son and granddaughter, stood watch over a red Radio Flyer wagon creaking under the weight of five pumpkins.
“And I’ll bet you there’s probably four or five more,” McMillen said, looking to where his granddaughter was.
The pumpkins cost anywhere from $5 for a small one to $12 for a really big one. The proceeds – the Botanic Gardens raised about $60,000 last year and expects more this year – go to fund educational programs, said spokeswoman Robin Doerr.
Parents said the pumpkin festival provides for a kind of educational experience for the kids.
“It’s agricultural, which you don’t find too much any more along the Front Range,” said Patricia Vitari, who was at the patch with her husband and two kids.
“It’s just kind of a free-for- all,” Dave Randall, Vitari’s husband, said. “The kids love it.”
That, actually, could be an understatement. In addition to the pumpkins, there were hayrides, a corn maze, a guy making balloon animals and an inflatable dragon with an area inside where kids could bounce.
The patch also was one of the few places where you could see Snow White and Sleeping Beauty – in the form of 3-year-olds Annika Nicholl and Brynne Harmon – team up to try to pull a wagon full of pumpkins. After a couple hearty tries and a couple turns of the wheels, Brynne was ready to give up and move onto other things.
“I want to go to the dragon,” she told her mom.
And off they went.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
