I headed up to the north country this past weekend (upstate New York, near Canton - see this map) to camp/hunt and tap maple trees. The weekend was a blast, though tapping the maple trees was much harder work than I expected. We were up by 8am Saturday drilling holes in trees, hammering in taps, and hanging buckets from the trees. We finished placing 180 taps in 130 trees by 1 o'clock or so. From there we headed into town, grabbed a drink and went back to the cabin (which had no running water, but had electric in the form of a generator). When we got back, I napped for 20 minutes before Bill's uncle came to the cabin asking for help getting his truck unstuck from the icy slush mix. An hour later, Brie and I had him out, and I was totally exhausted, and soaking wet. We headed into town again, grabbed some food and went back to the cabin. We spent the rest of the night eating, drinking and talking.
Sunday morning came and we were out in the forest again collecting sap. We ended up collecting 188 gallons of sap, which will make a mere 4 gallons of syrup. We finished collecting around 1pm and headed back to camp to pack up. We finally got on the road around 2:30 after stopping at Bill's parent's place to drop off some shotguns and a generator. The trip back was uneventful, but I was certainly happy to have a shower!
