This past weekend, Shaver’s Creek Center held it’s annual Maple Harvest Festival.  Centered around harvesting maple syrup.  Featuring a pancake breakfast, the festival served up over 7,000 pancakes to attendees.  Visitors were taught how to differentiate between sugar maple trees and other maple trees.  After finding an appropriate tree, visitors witnessed firsthand how to drill into the trunk of the tree to extract the sap (syrup).  Over 1,700 people attended the two-day event which also included activities such as live entertainment, nature activities and a demonstration of bird of prey hunting.

Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center is a 7,000 acre nature area that is centered around the 72 acre Lake Perez.  With annual visitors numbering over 100,000, Shaver’s Creek is located a mere 12 miles away from Penn State’s campus.  The Center serves as Penn State’s nature center and features a raptor center, hiking, biking, snowshoeing and skiing trails.  Open 7 days a week from 10:00 AM- 5:30 PM, Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center features a great deal of events, which can be found here.

[Shaver’s Creek Homepage]
[Source]
[Google Map]

P.S. You can expect a Campus Explorer piece on Shaver’s Creek Center when it becomes consistanly warmer in Central PA.