March 2022: Maple Festival

 Mid March 2022 brought the return of the Maple Festival for the first time since 2019. Maple Festival is one of the kids' favorite outdoor festivals that we do each year. It is high up in the mountains with sugar camps to visit, mountains to enjoy and lots of maple doughnuts to eat!!

Here is our little St. Patrick's Day crew ready to head to Maple Festival 2022.

We headed up a day early for two reasons. First, this was our very first show setting up our outdoor double booth (10x20 feet) so we needed a little extra time for set up. Most importantly, we had a field trip planned to a new to us sugar camp!

Highland County, Virginia is in the top edge of the Alleghany Highlands of Virginia along the Virginia- West Virginia border. It is one of the areas of higher elevation in Virginia generally being 2500-3500 feet in elevation. Because of its elevation and climate, there are a large number of hardwood trees such as maples in the area. Due to this large presence of maple trees paired with the warmer spring days in March followed by the cold overnight temperatures due to elevation, this is the perfect area to harvest the sap fro the trees and process it into maple syrup. We have been told that Highland County is the southernmost area in the country where maple syrup is produced!

This was our 8th year being a part of the Maple Festival and we try to visit a different sugar camp, where the syrup is produced, every year. There are about 13-14 sugar camps spread throughout the area. We actually went to one of the most northwestern sugar camps in Highland County. It was less than 3 miles from the West Virginia border! Before we arrived, we went through some beautiful country along our journey, including rolling hills and a roadside waterfall! 

It's a long drive to one of the westernmost edges of Virginia, but after getting the RV settled in our campsite, we finally made it to the Laurel Fork Sapsuckers Sugar Camp!

They were so kind at the sugar camp to give us a tour just for us and answer all our questions! We spent a good amount of time in the camp store too, especially picking out fresh maple syrup. They even had cinnamon maple syrup there!

There were little wood seats cut out of tree trunks all along the path to the sugar camp that the kids loved.

There were miles of tubing laced throughout the trees to capture the sap coming from the maple trees so that it could be boiled into syrup!

We made our way from the top of the hill down to the sugar shack where we could watch the sap being made into syrup.

The large kettles on the way down are how most sugar camps used to boil the sap.

The large vats in this picture are how most sugar camps process the syrup now. There are a few that still process it in a more traditional way.

Here the girls are being shown how they check the thickness of the syrup to see if it's the right consistency.

We got a few bottles of our favorite maple syrup and a couple new flavors (cinnamon) to try also and called it a fun and successful field trip to a new sugar camp!

Then it was time to get set up for the show

It was this little man's 1st Maple Festival and he enjoyed it!

First show with the new double booth setup too! We like it!

We also got to see Kay Kay and meet baby Jackson for the first time! The girls were beyond excited!

We LOVE the Maple Festival! We stopped by the LOVE sign for a family photo and that was a wrap on our 8th Maple Festival!