Week Twelve: Maple Syrup Days

On Sunday, March 18th, we headed up to LaGrange, IN to check out their Maple Syrup Days festival. http://www.backroads.org/travel-blog/2012/03/12/celebrate-maple-syrup-days-this-weekend/. Dan had talked about wanting to do some Maple tree tapping/syrup making for one of his P-52 weeks... but wasn't able to find anywhere around here that did anything like that. Well, one of my friends asked me a day or two prior to this if we were going to this (assuming that I already knew about it). So of course I asked what it was and if it was worth going to. She said that you could take a wagon ride out into the woods and see them tap the trees and watch a demonstration on how to make syrup, and eat lots of pancakes and sausage with maple syrup. I thought that this sounded perfect... but I also thought that it was something that the kids would enjoy, so we decided to take them along.

When we woke up that morning the weather was a bit less than ideal... especially since it was raining. But we got ourselves around and headed up to LaGrange...in a less than direct route (completely my fault). Eventually we got there and the weather was still cold and rainy and to make matters even worse, when I opened the trunk I realized that we didn't have the stroller with us. So I pulled out the baby sling (feeling very grateful for at least having that) and we headed up the drive to the park. Of course we only had one umbrella and I was getting frustrated trying to stay under it, so Colin and I headed off in the rain! When we got up to the park they were just starting a puppet show, so we sat down under a tent canopy and tried to dry off a bit while watching the puppet show. It was kinda funny... and a lot stupid, but Katie seemed to enjoy it and it gave me a chance to relax a bit from the drive and the rain. After that we headed over to the maple shop to see what they had to sell. Shockingly they had maple syrup (note the sarcasm), but they also had maple syrup suckers. Then we headed over to the Syrup house where we saw a demonstration on how they make syrup. This of course was when Katie decided that she had to go potty and Dan decided not to sit with us, so Colin and I headed off with Katie in search of a bathroom. About 20 minutes later we returned with empty bladders and were able to catch the tail end of the demonstration... and ran into our neighbors, the Neebes'. From there we headed over to the main building for a lunch of pacakes, sausage and lots of Maple Syrup... made right there a week or two earlier. Once we were all stuffed we headed outside where we were told we could find the wagon for a ride through the woods to see the trees that were tapped. We didn't have to wait long and Katie was able to do a leaf rubbing craft while we waited. But this time the rain had finally let up and the sun was even starting to come out a bit. The wagon ride wasn't very long, but it was neat to see all the trees with sap buckets hanging on them! Once we were done with the wagon ride we went back in the shop to buy some syrup and suckers (and I also managed to get an order for a baby sling thanks to Colin's modeling job), then we headed for home.

Since it was still pretty early in the day we decided to make a short pit stop at my parents house. They didn't know we were coming and I didn't even know if they would be home, but we took a chance and stopped. Thankfully my mom was home and my Dad returned home a little while later! After visiting for a couple hours it was time for us to head back home.