Blip meet with Clare (aka Tookie)

To my surprise and delight, my friend Clare arrived in Cleveland, onThursday in the wee hours of the morning. I knew she was coming "soon," but didn't exactly know which day soon would be. She doesn't have long to visit in Ohio and has a very big agenda, which she will tell you about in her Blip journal after she returns to Seattle, some time after April 3. With only a short time for our blipmeet, I knew we wanted to make a trip out to Chardon to Richards Maple Products and choose some maple syrup treats to send back home to the PNW. Our part of Ohio is known for delicious maple sugar products, and Richards, with over 100 years in the business, is a good place to shop for them.

After making our selections, we walked out back and took a little tour of their "sugar bush," led by the granddaughter (or great-granddaughter) of the original founder. The main blip for today features Clare, standing in the door of the sugar shack. In the extra pictures, you can see our tour guide and a few shots of the property, including the trees that are tapped for syrup and the pipes through which the sap runs back to the sugar shack, where it will be boiled down to make delicious maple syrup. Our guide gave us each a spoonful of the sap, fresh from the trees. To my surprise, it tasted like faintly maple-flavored water. Apparently, it takes hours of boiling down to create the wonderful maple syrup we like to serve on our pancakes. Keep your eyes on Blipfoto to see Clare's blips of our blipmeet and other places she visited while in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Thanks, Clare, for taking time out for our blipmeet. As always, it was a special treat for Bob and me.