Things to Do in Lanham

Listen. You’re a creative person. You know it, we know it. So what if you spend your life hunched in a cubicle, writing reports summarizing and aggregating multiple reports in a daily report in preparation for the weekly and monthly reports. There’s something inside you, something bright and starlike that burns in your soul like a fire-breathing dragon (only smaller and maybe without wings or fire breath, but with some impressive firelike appendages coming out of its nose instead, like star-nosed moles).

Wine & Food Festival

Learn the fundamentals of fine art while quickly becoming the sharpest, most dangerous crayon in the box. A skilled and accomplished artist leads each class, introducing prospective Leonardos to new and exciting techniques that will inspire first-timers and advanced colorfully decorated veterans. The classes focus on painting and drawing in a cozy, laid-back environment. The student-to-teacher ratio is about 7:1, ensuring personal attention and strict adherence to the golden ratio. All the necessary materials are provided, including canvases, brushes, paints, and berets. Currently, two morning and two night classes are offered, but more will be added to accommodate additional students. Check out the schedule for adult workshop dates and times.

Students can walk into Brush N Blush with nothing but a bottle of wine and a dream and walk out with a self-completed reproduction of Monet’s Water Lilies. But not all classes use famous masterpieces as templates. Some teach students how to render a sunset bleeding orange behind a Georgetown bridge or an impressionistic panorama of the skyline. The instructors have developed step-by-step methods for recreating impressive works of art, although each student is still bound to produce something with original touches, especially if they hold their brush in their teeth.

The team at Brush N Blush strives to make evenings at their studio one of a kind. They dare couples to change it up by forgoing another dinner-and-movie date for an active, artistic affair that ends with a personalized souvenir. All painting materials are provided, although students are encouraged to bring their own beverages and snacks. The studio recently began selling a selection of wines by the bottle and the glass.

It was supposed to be a utopia. When Professor Angelica D. Ream painstakingly planned her Dream City, she failed to anticipate the demonic intentions of her own family, who twisted the peaceful community into Scream City, a hellscape terrorized by werewolves, bill collectors, and other evil beasts summoned from the underworld. Snaking throughout Scream City is the Trail of Terror, which reaches deep into a haunted forest where a power-hungry werewolf notoriously slaughtered a Dream City farmer. The path is known to shape-shift from year to year, keeping even regular travelers on their curled toes.

Elsewhere, Hades’s Hayride creeps through cornfields menaced by packs of brutish monsters and, allegedly, the most fear-inducing demon ever spawned. Towering over the grounds is Lusion Manor, where Professor Ream concocted Dream City and her evil family now plots their continued reign. Entrants wander each room of the house—including an attic rumored to imprison many of the villagers—which was just expanded to five times the size of the original structure to stave off noise complaints filed against howling werewolves.

Once wanderers have been sufficiently terrified, they can fight back against roving zombies in Paintball Apocalypse. From aboard a double-decker steel cart, battlers shoot glow-in-the-dark paintballs at unarmed zombies as they stagger past. Warriors can power up at the concessions area, where groups scorch marshmallows over open flames and annihilate plates of deep-fried Twinkies, pizza, and funnel cakes. Though the backstory remains in place at Field of Screams every year, each attraction takes on new twisted twists each fall.

Across the 25 handgun and rifle lanes at Gilbert Indoor Range, sharpshooters can fire at traditional paper targets as well as running-man and pop-up targets for quick draws. The firearm emporium also invites marksmen to square off against zombies that bleed and demand more lines in their 3-D simulators. Aside from the action, classes cover practical topics such as shotgun home defense, basic pistol use, and safety recommendations. Guests can also partake in self-defense and karate training or scissor lessons in the event that the paper targets decide to rise against us.