That title is a little tricky.  Many of you probably thought this might be a “What Did Mia Do” type of post.  But, it is not.  This past weekends we went with some friends to the annual Maple Syrup Festival at the Heuston Woods State Park in Western Ohio.  It is one of the oldest festivals in Ohio and has been running for almost 50 consecutive years. It was an interesting day, up until the point at the end were the van became stuck in the mud, but that isn’t unusual for our van.

We began by lining up for a hay ride over to where they actually have maple trees tapped for honey.  Between our two families, we seemed to represent a large portion of the line for the hay ride!

Jessie and Riley are getting a much better with getting their pictures taken.

There were a LOT of people on the hayride, so we all had to become pretty friendly with our seatmates!

We made it out to the woods and congregated around the first stop, Maple Sap Collecting 101.

Our guide was Ranger Roberta!  OK, not her real name.  But this lady was high energy and was certainly fully invested into her job.  She grew up out in the country without running water or electricity until she was 15.  They lived off the land and she pretty much knew her stuff!

Some of the kids in the group took the collection cans off the trees so look at the sap being collected.

Ranger Roberta then explained how the containers worked and how the trees were tapped.

The kids had the opportunity to taste the sap, which was pretty much tasteless.  It takes 50 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of maple syrup, so you can imagine that a few drops out of a tree don’t have much flavor!

Even Bob decided to give it a try.  He is kind of a big kid himself!

Then the collection pail was put back on the tree and we were off to the next area.

The ground was still pretty wet from all the snow we have received, so pushing Leah’s wheelchair through the foliage WAS a little tricky at times.

I just thought this was a pretty shot of Jessie.  I do with she would have looked up, but you take what you can get!

Ranger Roberta showed us how the Indians hollowed out trees and used that to reduce down the sap with hot stones.

Then off we were again to our next station.  Notice the completely frozen lake in the background!

Ranger Roberta then showed us a cistern that they hold all the sap in until they are ready to distil it into syrup.

She also showed us how the Indians would heat up the rocks and put it in the sap to make the syrup.

The girls found the large put that they were boiling the sap in quite interesting.  Jessie found it a little TOO interesting as she felt compelled to put her hand into the liquid.  Thankfully there were sisters around her to keep her from actually doing it!

The smaller girls thought they could just blow the fire out!

Afterwards, we were able to taste a sample.  Wow.  Amazing.  How will we EVER go back to Log Cabin Syrup (like we buy Log Cabin Syrup.  More like Aunt Maples Syrup from Ali’s!)

On the hayride back, Riley kept Bob and Wendy pretty well entertained, as she does with most people that she becomes comfortable with.  She is a very social girl!

And, Bob kept her entertained also!

The ride back was pretty cold!

In all, it was a pretty enjoyable Saturday.  We were going to go to the zoo, but this seemed like a better option for this weekend.  Maybe we will hit the zoo this next weekend!

Cameron