Maple Syrup Festival and Covered Bridge Tour

This weekend we drove about an hour and a half south to check out a maple syrup festival.  We went to one of the farms that is now five generations of maple syrup farmers.  They had a incredibly fancy sent up with tubing connecting all their trees and vacuums to rapidly extract the water. In a garage they had all sorts of fancy equipment for turning the water into syrup.

We went with one goal in mind: to figure out how to make syrup on a hobby level with basic equipment.  Now we have a dream of having a few maple trees that are at least 10 inches in diameter, a huge pot, and a fire pit.  We picture a weekend spent collecting and boiling the syrup water and celebrated with loads of pancakes and homemade syrup.  Who knows when this will be realized, but it will be part of our house hunting plans in the future.

The farm was located on one of the Indiana covered bridge loops.  We drove along part of the yellow one and made a stop at the West Union Bridge.  Nathan and Laura were fast asleep in the car so Andrew, Emily and I snuck out for a quick peak.  The weather was beautiful. The bridge had lots of large cracks and Emily was a bit nervous so she and I were buddies.

We drove through two more bridges before taking a necessary bathroom break.  The roads were dirt and we were grateful it wasn’t any muddier.  Andrew and I were being pretty goofy during the drive and Emily wasn’t super impressed.

We drove into a small town, Kingman Indiana, in search of an option.  The gas stations were closed, the post office was closed, and Andrew was in the process of calling the library when I into a little hardware store and the owner confirmed they had one we could use.  Laura and Nathan woke up about this time so we headed to the park for the kids to play while I fed Laura.

We had an hour left in the car.  After five hours the kids were a bit stir crazy (read: LOUD) and Andrew and I were starting to feel a bit weary.  When we were 10 minutes from home Emily announced, “I’m done. I just want to be home!”  We all burst out laughing and ended on a good note!