Someone is putting pumpkins all along Frying Pan Road. Or, less likely, it’s a pumpkin invasion! These pumpkins are communicating with each other and make plans to meet annually on this hallowed road. And as All Hallows’ Eve draws near, these pumpkins celebrate and honor the dead cultivar of the squash and gourds that came before them as they lure travelers off the road to follow a will-o’-the-wisp. Creepy indeed, if that’s what these pumpkins are up to.
Here’s what we know – these pumpkins have been showing up for years, lots of years. Nobody can say when it first started. Nobody knows who’s putting these pumpkins out there. But, every year around Halloween, pumpkins appear in every sort of place on Frying Pan Road.
High and low along the road, from just past Downtown Basalt to Reudi Reservoir, pumpkins lie waiting for eyes to spot them. In plain sight, hidden in cracks, wading in the Fryingpan River, there are lots of pumpkins. Maybe 100? It’s impossible to know. You can try to count them all, but it seems like the longer you look at a section of this winding valley road you see one you didn’t find before.
It’s like Where’s Waldo, except Waldo is a pumpkin. And if you didn’t know, it’s crazy dangerous to drive around and try to thumb through a Where’s Waldo book. So, be careful when pumpkin peeping up and down the Frying Pan.
Basalt’s own Halloween tradition, these mysterious pumpkins just suddenly appear. No one says anything, no one knows anything about it. If you wander up the road you’ll see many pumpkins, and you’ll leave feeling sure there were many more that you didn’t see. Just know that those pumpkins that you didn’t see, saw you. Spooky.
Know anything about these mysterious pumpkins? Know why Frying Pan Road and Fryingpan River can’t decide if frying pan should be one word or two? Let us know in the comments below!
Love it!