Maple Syrup Festival Attracts Thousands Of Visitors To Highland County, Virginia   Highland County, "Virginia's Switzerland," will celebrate a lengthy tradition of maple syrup-making at its 52nd annual Highland Maple Festival on the weekends of March 13-14 and march 20-21. Listed on "Southeast Tourism Society's Top 20 Events" for 16 years and designed a Local Legacy by the Library of Congress in 1999, the Highland Maple Festival attracts tens of thousands of visitors. On the second and third weekends of every March, farmers in this rural community open their "sugar camps" so that visitors can observe the process of making maple syrup, from tree-tapping to bottling the finished product. Festival highlights include all-you-can-eat buckwheat and pancake breakfasts, maple doughnuts, locally harvested rainbow trout, arts and crafts shows, bluegrass music and clogging. Locating in the mountains of Virginia's Western Highlands, the Highland Maple Festival recreates a unique and informative insight into a rapidly vanishing way of rural American life. For more information on the 52nd annual Highland Maple Festival, contact the Highland County Chamber of Commerce at 540-468-2550 or visit the Chamber's website at www.highlandcounty.org

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