Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Lisa

There’s always room for …

I could finish this sentence a lot of different ways. So could you.

Here’s the complete sentence I intended for today:

There’s always room for ice cream.

That’s right. I’m writing about ice cream today. It’s been a week full of some hard emotional stuff and the world can feel like a rotten place to live, so right now, I just want to talk about ice cream.

Photo by Anna Ribes on Unsplash

Besides, school starts on Tuesday so summer is technically over even if we have a full month before the calendar says it’s time for fall.

Let me tell you a little bit about my relationship with ice cream. I can’t ever remember not having one. In my early childhood years, my grandparents managed the local Dairy Queen, and I spent more time than I can add up in the back room–reading, watching TV, working on homework, helping out with occasional DQ-related tasks that probably wouldn’t be allowed today. I smashed candy bars with a rubber mallet for blizzard mix-ins and filled the bottoms of paper cups with peanuts for what would eventually become Buster Bars. (This was all back in the day when each DQ made its own treats on site. I’m not sure that happens anymore.)

My grandparents had a rule for the girls (and yes, it was pretty much only girls who worked for them)–you can’t eat your own mistakes. So if an ice cream cone wasn’t the right number of ounces or didn’t have the iconic curly-cue on top, they’d often walk their “mistake” to the back room and hand it off to me or my brother. (Let’s not judge the amount of ice cream I consumed this way, shall we?)

Dairy Queen soft serve ice cream will always hold a special place in my heart. Even on our most recent trip back to my hometown, we had Dairy Queen ice cream cupcakes for a family get-together and I could not eat just one.

My ice cream tastes have broadened since then, and I won’t bore you with the details of every ice cream experience I’ve ever had. (I’m not sure I could recall them all anyway!) But I will bore you with a summary of our local ice cream adventures this summer.

Lancaster County, where we live, is rich in ice cream variety, and you’d have to go at least once a week all summer long to try every ice cream available in the county. Maybe more. We didn’t make it to an ice cream shop every week, but we tried most Wednesdays to make an ice cream run to an actual ice cream shop. If you’re ever in the area and looking for ice cream, feel free to start with this list. You can trust that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to ice cream. After all, it practically runs in my blood.

We made it to seven Lancaster County ice cream shops as a family and ranked each one out of five scoops (instead of stars, because you know, it’s ice cream.) Some places we had a coupon or a discount. I’ve included the total price, the kinds of ice cream we ate and our overall impressions of the atmosphere of the ice cream shop and quality of the ice cream. (None of the ice cream we ate is pictured because we were too busy eating ice cream to take pictures! Maybe next time …)

Photo by Michelle Tsang on Unsplash

If you are not local to Lancaster, I won’t be offended if you stop reading, but I would encourage you to find your own local ice cream shops and make your own list! (I should also mention that I am in no way being compensated for this blog post, although I’m open to offers if anyone needs an ice cream reviewer!)

Here they are, starting with our medium favorites and building up to our most favorites. (And let’s be honest, even a mediocre ice cream experience is better than no ice cream at all!)

7. Our final stop on the summer ice cream tour was Meisse Candies and Ice Cream Parlor in downtown Lancaster. I was excited to try this because the ice cream parlor is new AND they serve Penn State Creamery ice cream, which is not readily available in our area. We used to stop at the Penn State Creamery on the college campus while driving through State College on our way west to visit friends, and it was always so good. So, maybe my expectations were high. Only 8-10 flavors were offered, and I know that’s still a lot of choices, but at the creamery, there are dozens. We paid $14.85 for three smalls and one medium (three cones, one dish, no extra charges). Our flavors were chocolate chip cookie dough, death by chocolate, peachy Paterno and butter pecan. Don’t get me wrong, it was good ice cream, but we were there an hour before closing and the customer service was only okay, and I didn’t really feel like lingering. But the ice cream parlor itself is unique and we enjoyed looking at all the chocolates available in the candy shop. 3.5/5.

6. Our first stop of the summer was The Pretzel Hut, which is technically still in Lancaster County, but not by much. It’s north on 501, almost to Lebanon County and this was a place we liked when we lived there. Even though it’s on a busy highway, it sits back from the road surrounded by a wooded area. It’s a beautiful and peaceful spot for rest if you’re driving that road. They serve Turkey Hill ice cream. We paid $12.15 for four cake cones (three small, one medium) in the following flavors: chocolate marshmallow, cherry vanilla, toffee caramel crunch and peanut butter pie. It was rainy, so we didn’t sit outside, but that’s an option and I take it every chance I get. 3.5/5.

5. We had a buy-one-get-one coupon for the Bird-in-Hand Bakery & Cafe that we had to use in May or June, so not long after school got our, we went there. It’s a busy place on the edge of the Amish tourist corridor. Once you cross into BIH, I feel like you are fully immersed in Amish tourism. Even with the coupon, we still paid over $14 but that’s partly because our daughter wanted a unicorn milkshake and when they handed it to her, her eyes lit up like it was the best day ever. The rest of us had single dip waffle cones: whoopie pie fudge swirl, blackberry cobbler and death by chocolate. The scoops are generous here and on this particular day the waffle cones were a little chewy towards the bottom. But we sat outside on the porch, which has ample seating and is a pleasant way to pass the time. Be prepared for crowds depending on the time of day and year you go because it seems like a popular spot for tourists. 4/5.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

4. By the middle of summer, we wanted to try out some places we’d never been before, so we checked out this place in Lititz called Greco’s Italian Ices and Homemade Ice Cream. Lititz, if you don’t know, a few years ago was voted Coolest Small Town in America, and it is pretty neat. We haven’t explored there as much as I would like but what we have seen is fun and unique. The first thing you need to know about Greco’s is it’s a cash-only place, so if you’re like us and never have cash on you, make sure you get some before you go. They also don’t have a website, and I’m telling you, the place was PACKED when we went. It was a Wednesday night in July and even though the line was almost out the door, we were served pretty quickly. We paid $17.35 for three single dips (two with waffle cones) and one Italian ice (Granny Smith Apple flavor). For ice cream we had brownie batter, cherry cheesecake and A Taste of Lititz (vanilla ice cream with Sturgis pretzel pieces, Wilbur dark chocolate chips, bittersweet chocolate fudge and Greco’s own peanut butter topping). The ice cream was creamy (not all of them are) and the portions were generous. The waffle cones came from a package but were still good. There’s both indoor and outdoor seating. We ended up on a bench because like I said, it was a popular place that night. 4.5/5.

3. Oregon Dairy is a supermarket, farm, ice cream shop, and I don’t know what else all rolled into one. It’s a fun summer destination because of the outdoor playground and the animals you can enjoy in a mini-zoo format (goats, a pig, deer–none are roaming wild). We had two coupons for this stop so we paid $6 for four calf dips of ice cream (regular price would have been around $12). Our flavor choices were oranges and cream, rainbow sherbet, coffee and cashew raspberry. It’s Oregon Dairy ice cream, fresh from the farm, and one of our favorite things about this place is the unique flavor options. Also, the sunsets are beautiful from the deck, and the kids can immediately run off their sugar high on the playground. 5/5

2. Our favorite downtown Lancaster ice cream stop is the Lancaster Sweet Shoppe. They serve Pine View Dairy ice cream (which is its own ice cream stop in the southern-ish part of the country). The kids had coupons for free single scoops from their summer reading program, so we paid $7.45 for a single scoop in a dish and a double scoop in a waffle cone. We chose: banana peanut butter, chocolate chip cookie dough, espresso oreo caramel, german chocolate cake. The outdoor seating here is magical. It’s a patio out the back door of the shop, walled in with strings of lights overhead. It’s a lovely outdoor city location. Even though we didn’t get it this time around, I recommend the chai stroopie flavor. The shop is known for its Dutch stroopies, a waffle-like cookie with a layer of caramel inside. Adding it to ice cream is a local flavor experience. The company also supports refugees in our community by offering jobs and ESL training, so you know that has my heart. 5/5

1. It’s no surprise that Good Life Ice Cream and Treats was our summer favorite. It’s our overall favorite always because of the oddball flavors and the high-quality and value of the products. We go here enough that we had a $5 off coupon from their rewards club, so we paid $7.80 for four single-dip waffle cones. A note about waffle cones: here, they are included in the price, no extra charge unless you want a dipped waffle cone. I love waffle cones but don’t always want to pay extra. Plus, they are homemade, so they are totally delicious. Did I mention you get a topping mix-in also included in the price? Hold on to your seats when you read these flavor choices: Old Bay Fries with mini-marshmallows mixed in; goofy grape with white chocolate chips; meadow tea with chocolate chips; buttered popcorn with Twix. Guys, in season, they have sweet corn ice cream, and it is tasty. If you’re up for a flavor adventure, I can’t recommend this place enough. We gave it 5+/5.

Well, if you made it this far, you’re either as mad about ice cream as I am; a dedicated Lancastrian; or bored enough to read a long blog post about ice cream.

Tell me: What do you look for in an ice cream shop? Do you have a local favorite place? If you were going to recommend one place to get ice cream to someone visiting your town, where would you send them?

 

In search of the good

Years ago, my brother and I started playing this game while traveling (separately) mostly in airports called People You Meet While Traveling. Mostly it was a way to cope with the (usually) annoying humans we encountered in security lines or at the gate or while boarding. We would message/text/tweet each other about the person, to whom we gave an unflattering name like: “Those who think they’re too good for TSA PreCheck like standing in lines makes you a better person.” (That one’s my brother’s candidate.) Or this one I’m not proud of: The Assholes. “Oh I’m sorry. Did the four of you and your suitcases want to ride the elevator with the two of us and our bags? Too bad. We’re going to mean mug you while the door closes and not even acknowledge that you’re standing there.”

Photo by Yolanda Sun on Unsplash

I’ll be honest: it was a mean game because we thought we were funny and were laughing amongst ourselves at someone else’s expense.

We picked up this game again this summer in Florida. It started while my brother was flying to meet us there and continued in person on one of our family vacation adventures. It was bringing us down in a way I didn’t notice, and that’s when my brother suggested that we change our game. Instead of looking for the people who were annoying and had the potential to ruin our experiences, he said maybe we should look for the people we would want to be traveling with.

Let’s be honest: there are WAY more candidates for the first category than the latter.

But I won’t say this often: My brother was right.

—

I cannot explain how easy it is for me to see what’s wrong. With a situation, about an experience, in a person, in a written correspondence. It’s like my brain automatically shifts to look for the mistake or the failing, and I’m not even trying to be negative (at least not all the time). I think, at the heart of it, I want to make things right and good. Pointing out the negative is believing there’s potential for improvement. (If only I were this good at pointing it out in myself!)

But it’s a total drag on my mood and emotions. Finding what’s wrong is the easiest thing ever. Looking for good is hard work.

When my brother suggested we change our game, I felt a little bit of shame at the way I’d latched on to the previous idea, how eager I was to make fun of all the people who I thought were behaving badly. I took his words to heart and the next day I made a list of the people we’d encountered up to that point in Florida.

The list included a retired Boeing engineer who was telling stories of his work at NASA to visitors of the Kennedy Space Center, an uber-friendly waitress at a restaurant we picked on a whim in St. Augustine, and our bus driver at NASA who stopped to point out crocodiles and other wildlife and seemed to truly enjoy his job.

You know what surprised me about this list? How good I felt making it. Each of these people brought a smile to my face and even now, months later, I can picture every single one of them. Do you know how many people on the other list I remember? I’m going to have to go with “zero.”

I tried this experiment again while traveling with the kids and it was hard. I’d much rather make a snarky comment about the guy sitting in the exit row taking every last minute available to him on a phone call while the flight attendant is trying to talk to him about his ability to perform the role of helper in an emergency situation.

It’s harder to remember the two ladies who quietly gave up their seats so a mother and son could sit together.

—

Maybe there’s some psychological or physiological reason it’s easier to remember and notice the negative stuff than the positive stuff. (It’s easier to frown than smile, right?)

But the negativity is killing me (and it might be killing you, too), maybe not literally but something withers in my soul when I spend too much time on what’s wrong with people.

I do want to be clear that I’m not talking about drawing attention to actual injustice. Focusing on the wrong in situations of any kind of discrimination is absolutely necessary. In a way, calling attention to the wrong is setting things right.

I’m talking more about the minor grievances I have with people who don’t behave like I think they should. I’m talking about the little annoyances I have at the grocery store or the gas station or while driving. These are not injustices, at least not usually. These things are easy to spot, maybe because there are so many of them happening or they just have a way of drawing attention. I don’t know.

All I really know is that it takes effort to look for the good–in people, in circumstances, in the world around us. Watch the news and it’s mostly bad, but occasionally there’s a story of people helping other people or doing something they didn’t have to do. Those things make the news because they are unusual and extraordinary in our day, which makes me sad.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

And determined.

—

I want to seek out the good in the world around me and when I can’t find enough of it, to be the good in the world around me.

This applies to my faith experience as well. I believe with all that I am that Jesus is the Good News embodied and that our mission as His people is to embody Good News as well. We can write it and speak it, and we must live it out. If we’re ever going to change the world, or even just ourselves, it’s going to have to start with Good News.

News like we’re loved, period, and that hope is not a futile feeling. News that not everyone or everything is horrible. We have to tell the stories of the good we’ve seen. We have to elevate the beauty, not in place of the disaster but in the midst of them.

At an outdoor concert this summer, a folk group that has become a new favorite of our family, sang a song called “American Flowers.” Take a listen/watch.

It’s a ballad that pushes back the darkness a bit. The chorus goes like this:

I have seen American flowers all across this land
From the banks of the Shenandoah, along the Rio Grande
Do not fear the winter blowing in the hearts of men
I have seen American flowers they will bloom again

This is the kind of Good News we need. Hope and beauty and truth. It is not ignorant of the bad (winter) but hopeful that the season will change and testifies to the spring that is on the way. (Think also of Narnia and Aslan on the move.)

—

When did we stop telling stories of the good we’d seen? When did we shift our focus to the complaints? Maybe it’s always been that way.

It won’t be easy to look for the good but it’s restorative work that starts with the soul of the one who is paying attention.

Are you paying attention? Am I?