Things to Do in Wrentham

Indoor and outdoor Paintball playing fields. 3 locations: Randolph indoor field, Holbrook outdoor field, Plainville outdoor fields.

On Xtreme Action Sports' 13,000-square-foot indoor field, every surface in sight is splattered with colorful reminders of paintball impacts. The maze of wood walls draws players into close-range confrontations, forcing them to dive for cover beneath open windows and tactically placed barriers. Whether using paintballs, airsoft pellets, or laser tag markers, teams fan out into the facility in search of opposing players or first aid kids that inexplicably hover and spin in the air. Between competitions, players can return to the pro shop to peruse markers, safety gear, and travel accessories.

Saba Alhadi was visiting her retired father when she received the phone call. A man on the other end, with a British accent, informed her he'd seen her photos of the city of Boston. He worked with Random House and wanted to publish her work—provided she write a book about the city and furnish it with her photographs of 16 historic sites. More than five years later, Saba's book, Boston in Photographs can be found on gift-shop shelves in the Old State House. Formerly a travel agent, she began building her portfolio as she turned her lens on the city and developed photography walking tours through historic neighborhoods.

On each of her tours, she reveals historic details such as brick sidewalks, verdant cemeteries, Romanesque courtyards, and flower-packed window boxes, and encourages those on her tour to look for unlikely subjects. Meanwhile, she interlaces the history with photo tips on how colors on different buildings complement each other, how a reflection of a historic church in a window can become a composition, and how to keep a historic interpreter from startling when the shutter goes off. She also devises scavenger hunts throughout Victorian neighborhoods, sending participants scattering to decode cryptic clues that draw on notable local facts, such as which districts were once home to wealthy citizens and which homes have pools in the backyard.

Luke Adams's childhood talent for drawing spurred him toward an education in glasswork at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he honed his technique under artists from all over the country. Today, Luke molds his molten medium into colorful, one-of-a-kind starfish suncatchers, jewelry, and paperweights. Through jewelry-making and glassblowing classes, his studio spreads a passion for glass-oriented artistry, teaching students to shear and assemble artful shards, molding them into versatile, translucent building blocks similar to the kind used to by Gustave Eiffel to construct an ice-cube model of his infamous tower.

BattlegroundZ facilitates recreational combat with an indoor compound designed to accommodate games of paintball, airsoft, and laser tag. At BattlegroundZ’s indoor paintball facility, masked and visored shooters safely bombard each other with reusable silicone balls while negotiating 10,000 square feet of treacherous halls and repositionable obstacles. Depending on the particular skirmish, joyful gangs of up to 35 paintballers strive to accomplish a variety of objectives, from pelting other players to capturing an opposing team’s flag or tricking rivals into designing a flag with clashing colors.

Split into two rooms, the 4,000-square-foot laser-tag arena lets combatants take cover behind phosphorescent partitions as they take aim at enemies clad in illuminated vests. BattlegroundZ also hosts airsoft competitions in which players dodge BBs while attempting to accomplish tactical objectives. Before games, weapons are tested to ensure they do not fire pellets faster than 270 and 350 feet-per-second, so their impact feels less like a blow to the body and more like a raspberry to the soul.

Working alongside her husband Joe, Horseplay Stables co-owner Terry Hoy draws upon her more than 25 years of equestrian riding and training to help students realize their full riding potential. The pair also relies on help from an extensive team of licensed instructors and volunteers. At Horseplay Stables, students can master the basics of several horseback-riding styles, including huntseat, jumping, classical dressage, or western pleasure.