RICHMOND — On weekends when the weather was good at Moose Mountain Adventure Park, sometimes so many people came to play on its large mini-golf course people had to wait, in the hot sun, up to 40 minutes as others made their way through the course.

Thursday, an additional 18-hole course opened for the first time, all of it fully accessible, but also with more spots for shade, including one hole with a waterfall that plunges over and under it, cooling the air, and the golfers.

“(The first course had) been so popular sometimes people had to wait, and we thought it would be better if people didn’t have to wait around, getting hot,” said Jeremy Purington, who owns the park with his wife, Michelle.

The new course, dubbed the Moose Grotto, echoes the Maine-based themes of the original course.

It also has multiple spots that provide shade from roofs of structures, including a mock-up of a Maine camp, which will soon have a system of misters that will spray cold water to further cool down golfers as they play on the otherwise wide-open, mostly treeless course.

And it includes a spot, after the ninth hole, with benches where people can take a break, another addition to the new course added after feedback from people who played the first course that opened in 2023.

That ninth hole also provides a unique challenge, putting across a rushing stream with only a few-inches-wide board to hit your ball across. If you don’t make it — and Michelle Purington said most won’t — the ball goes into the rushing water of the stream, and under a fiberglass log where the water plunges through a metal grate and the golf ball continues onto the putting green. If you do make it across the treacherous crossing, your ball will go into a PVC pipe that leads directly to the hole for, potentially, a hole-in-one.

Another lesson the couple learned from their first course — if you have water hazards, as they do running throughout the courses — you’d better find floating golf balls for people to play with, otherwise they’ll sink or, worse yet, clog up pumps that move water on the site.

Music played from loudspeakers Thursday morning as a few customers checked out the new course.

Siblings Jamie and Julie Kravetz, of Litchfield, were the first two mini-golfers to try the course, other than the Puringtons, who played the course with their two sons, Charlie, 15, and Ben, 12, before it opened to the public. Their sons also work at the course.

“It’s nice, a good mix of easy and hard holes,” Jamie Kravetz said of the new course. “I especially like the waterfall.”

The waterfall will be topped, in a few weeks when it arrives from out West, by a 7-foot-tall fiberglass moose, one of the finishing touches still to be added to the course.

The Puringtons said people have been asking, given the Moose Mountain Adventure Park name, “where’s the moose?”

It’s on its way and is expected later this month, along with a fiberglass, 8-foot-tall bear. The concrete walkway that takes players around the course has bear paw prints in it leading to where the bear will be located, and moose tracks by the moose, which will be perched atop a deck built at the very peak of the hilly, rocky terrain.

Course designer Bob Horwath, who has built more than 150 mini-golf course over 25 years of specializing in them, worked with Jeremy Purington, who has a home construction company, Purington Construction. They built the course over the last 11 months, using the extensive amount of rock at the ledge-filled site as raw material.

The two courses take up about 2 acres of the 10-acre property at 663 Main St., which is also Route 197, and sits just a few hundred yards from Interstate 295.

Th Puringtons plan to also build something fun on some of the rest of the parcel in the future. Jeremy said many people have expressed interest in a go-kart track, so that could be what’s next. Or maybe a climbing wall.

The new course has its own shack where people can pick up their putters and register to play, or grab a light snack, in addition to the business’ headquarters building, where more snacks, including ice cream, are available for purchase. And visitors can mine for shiny stones on a recreated mining sluice. Both shacks have decks with picnic tables and games people can play. There is also an Amato’s pizza and sandwiches trailer onsite.

“We wanted to have a fun, relaxed atmosphere,” Michelle Purington said.

A former worker at the town’s Umberhine Public Library, and a substitute teacher, Michelle Purington said they plan to add a storywalk to a pathway between the two courses, with excerpts from the children’s book “There are no moose on this island,” on stands along the path, so people can read along as they walk.

The park employs 20 part-time workers. Michelle Purington said the number of employees will remain the same with the addition of the course, though some of the workers will get more hours due to the expansion.

Moose Mountain Adventure Park’s hours vary seasonally and by the day, with it opening as early as 9 a.m. and closing as late at 10 p.m.