The Bottomless Cookie Jar Philosophy

You may find it hard to believe but Maplelag has five “bottomless cookie jars”, filled as often as needed, with four kinds of homemade cookies. There is also fruit, coffee, tea and hot chocolate available 24 hours a day in the lodge. This “bottomless” philosophy is apparent in our dining room as well, where the meals are served family style, all-you-can-eat, as well as in the service in general. It also means that the hot tub, sauna and steam room are available any time of the day or night. In other words, we try to do whatever is necessary to make you feel as if you were a guest in our home!

Day Skiing Snow Shoeing and Fat Biking

Although our number one focus is servicing the overnight guests and experience, we do allow day skiing. The daily rate is $20 and $15 for Children 18 and under. College day pass is $15. Season passes are available at a rate of $150 per person. Family pass is $250.

To purchase online, go to gift shop products.

Snowshoe and/or fat bike only fee for access to the snowshoe trail and fat bike trails is $15. A state ski pass is not required to use the trails. Trail fees help offset our property taxes. We are a family owned and operated business and receive no grant and aid funding.

Foreign Staff

Over the years we have had quite a number of foreign students come to live and work at Maplelag. We feel that it has been a most rewarding experience for all parties concerned with the students learning about an aspect of America that they might not otherwise see, and we have been able to make some fantastic friends that become like family as well as having excellent workers. We try to do a very comprehensive screening process, perhaps the number one requirement being that they are nonsmokers, as Maplelag is a nonsmoking facility. Then, we have them check our web site and we also give them the e mails of other students that have been to Maplelag. They can then compare experiences to see if they would indeed be a Maplelag person. Even though we are very rural, the students have more interaction with Americans than they would most likely have in a larger city. Some friends of students who have come here to visit who went to large cities soon discovered they had made a mistake and wished that they had had a more rural experience. The interns have to be a college or university student in their home country and then they are able to get a J-1 visa. This entitles them to stay four months and get a U.S. social security card, thus making everything legal. Right now, we have Cecily who is from Taiwan and Vilo from Slovakia. We are working on applications for the coming season right now, and as we get so many applications it takes some time with e mail interviewing to make sure that the student coming will be a Maplelag person.

To date we have had students from Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Zambia, France, Belgium, Austria, Taiwan, Poland, Brazil, Peru and Chile. Their English is, for the most part, very good to excellent, and our guests always delight in visiting with the students. Perceptions of our country as well as other countries are more closely defined with this interaction, and we are all much more better informed and comfortable when we can work shoulder to shoulder. Please try and visit with our staff when you are here.

Food For Thought

At Maplelag, one of the favorite activities of our guests is eating! As one of our guests commented, “Skiing is something to do to pass the time between meals!”. And, food is something we take very seriously! We prepare all of our entrees, desserts and most of our breads from scratch, using only the finest ingredients. As more and more restaurants are using prepared/ pre-packaged food, quality food is becoming a lost art. We strive to prepare meals that are hearty and wholesome: something like “going to Grandma’s on a Sunday afternoon” with a gourmet flair!

In our travels, we seek out unusual and/or ethnic restaurants that aren’t “chain like”. We then take the most memorable ideas from these experiences and apply them to our menus. Then, when ordering food we don’t go with the best price, but instead we look for the best quality.

Some of the items we use that we feel are unique are, pure maple syrup for our Norwegian pancakes, locally harvested honey, imported chocolate from Switzerland, and imported lingonberries, cheeses and flatbreads from Scandinavia for the Scandinavian smorgasbord. Like the bottomless cookie jars, all meals follow the “all you can eat” philosophy.