Sunday, April 06, 2008

Elmira Maple Syrup Festival; Copious Amounts of Food and People

The Elmira Maple Syrup Festival was this weekend. After a couple of botched attempts I made it there. Tara and I were going to go but at the last minute she had a couple of patients in hospital that she had to see that morning. My backup plan was to go with some friends from work but that fell through as well. My third option came through - I ended up going with Laura and Tim (Tara's sister and brother-in-law) plus a bunch of Tim's university friends.

We got there about 3 hours later than Tara and I usually do and it was packed. P-a-c-k-e-d. We hit the pancake tent (a first for me) and I ate two plate sized pancakes with loads of maple syrup. With three bites left, I had to tap out. It was too many carbs without enough meat or something else in my belly. So off we went in search of meat.

Aside: About 20 minutes after we got our pancakes, there was word that they ran out of pancake batter. I didn't think that would have been possible.

We pushed our way through the crowds and I found some meat on a bun (back-bacon and sauerkraut - mmmmmm). It was exactly what my stomach needed. After that we wandered a bit, as much as you can wander with people pressing in on all sides, and then headed for the car. We didn't even see a quarter of the booths, but we all agreed that there were too many people there.

And that sums up the typical Elmira Maple Syrup Festival experience. Too many people and too much food. It was good.

Here are a few shots I took with Tara's D50.


1 comment:

Elfrieda said...

We were there, too! We finally followed James's plan to leave at a crazy early time in the morning (6:30), and it worked amazingly well. We parked in town, only a block or two from the main event! We were first in line for pancakes, and could see everything in the booths without elbowing our fellow festival attenders out of the way. By ten we thought it was too crowded and left.
This is not to make you jealous, but rather to encourage you that it can be fun if you get there early enough.