After a long cold winter are you itching to get out into the sunshine and looking for an educational, fun, and exciting way to spend your time outdoors? Then how about a holiday that emphasizes old fashion pioneer fun? Making maple syrup in Algonquin Park! This is an excellent way for guests to have a wonderful time making their own maple syrup the way the pioneers used to.
There are many legends about how maple sugar was first discovered. One myth tells how an Iroquois Chief had thrown his tomahawk into a maple tree late one winter evening. After he removed it the following morning, the weather turned sunny and warm. Sap began to flow from the cut in the maple tree, and drip down into a container which was at its base. The Chief's squaw used the maple sap to boil the meat for dinner. As the water in the sap boiled away, a wonderful, sweet maple taste was left with the meal.
Join us for a few days at the EcoLodge during maple syrup harvesting season, and we'll show you how early settlers made their syrup. Tapping involves going from tree to tree in the sugarbush, and collecting large quantities of maple sap. We then boil it down on an outdoor woodstove, until all we are left with is the sweet magical syrup with that great taste we all treasure.
In the evening, we will try our hand in the EcoLodge kitchen, creating some decadent maple flavour dishes using the syrup we collected throughout the day.
We stay at the beautiful and rustic Algonquin Wilderness Eco-Lodge, which comes complete with an outdoor hot tub and a sauna! There are no televisions or video games, since the lodge is run by alternative energy, so it is a wonderful way to spend quality time with your friends or family. It is located in the middle of the Algonquin forests, so the maple trees we need for tapping are right outside our front door.
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