Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Summer

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?

 

What I can keep from vacation (and what I can’t)

Our family spent last week in Florida, a throwback to the summer vacations of my youth. My parents bought a timeshare condo sometime in the late ’80s, I think, so week-long trips to Daytona Beach became a regular thing, often in summer, sometimes over spring break.

Until last week, it had been six years since I’d been there. Many more years since I’d been there with my parents and my brother. Reuniting in the place where we made so many family memories (more than a few of which I seem to have forgotten) was a gift and a treat, a memory in itself.

—

I have a complicated relationship with vacation. I love the idea of seeing new places and getting away from the daily duties of life. But I hate packing. And travel causes me some anxiety. (Let me tell you about the congested roads from Virginia Beach to Hilton Head. Relaxing in the car was not an option on our way there.) And as much as I enjoy getting away, I really like coming home. I’m the kind of person who would rather unpack and put everything back where it belongs. Schedules and routine are my friends.

I don’t have a lot of trouble leaving vacation behind. Occasionally I’ll entertain the thought of staying in a new place forever. (This is also known as “searching Zillow for beachfront homes to confirm that I don’t have a million dollars to buy them.”) But vacation isn’t reality. I know myself too well. I would find something to hate about whatever “paradise” I chose as home. I just can’t picture an eternal vacation.

—

As I’ve eased back into our regular life this week, I’ve thought about what I can keep from vacation, and not just the memories and souvenirs and pictures. (And sand. How is there still so much sand?)

Mornings, for example. In Florida, I tried to keep to my usual wake-up time between 6 and 6:30 a.m. I know. I was on vacation. I was supposed to sleep in. Too many days of sleeping in throws my whole day off, though, and it takes me a good hour to adjust after I crawl out of bed. I am not a morning person, but I know what works for my body and mind.

It’s not hard to get out of bed that early when you know the sun is just starting to peek over the horizon and you can watch the show from your balcony (or pull up a front row seat on the beach). I checked on the sunrise every morning as my coffee brewed or as I got ready to go for a run. (I had a mileage goal to complete for a fundraiser.)

I’m not sure this view would ever get old.

On the days I didn’t head to the beach for a tortuous exercise session in 100 percent humidity, I sat on the balcony with a book and my laptop and watched the world wake up. One morning, I witnessed a family preparing to leave for Disney. Most mornings, it was the usual crowd, though: half-clothed (in swimsuits or pajamas) vacationers stumbling out of their rooms toward the beach to watch the sun rise. Occasionally, I’d have to say “good morning” to a neighbor on their balcony. Never did I feel like I had to be fully clothed to start the day. At home, I tend to wait till I’ve had coffee and breakfast and a change of clothes before I wander outside. (I mean, what if the neighbors or a car speeding by saw me in my jammies? Shocking!)

The day after we returned home, though, I took this little piece of vacation with me. I wandered outside in my sleeping clothes to the garden to see how our vegetable babies fared in our absence. And I wondered why I give myself “acceptable hours” to use my front porch, my favorite place in our little rental. Why don’t I ever take my coffee and breakfast outside to greet the day like I did in Florida?

—

And speaking of this little rental …

We stayed in a condo in Florida. It’s a pretty simple setup. A bedroom. A bathroom. A long hallway. A small kitchen with the bare essentials. A small living space. A balcony. I rarely think of condos as spacious, but really, we had all we needed for the week: a place to sleep and a place to keep and prepare food; a shower, a toilet; a couple of options for relaxing at the beginning or the end of a day.

This condo in particular is designed for vacationers, and I often complain about the size of the kitchen. We like to cook a meal or two (or more) when we’re on vacation, but the kitchens aren’t stocked for home chefs. So, we make do with what we have, using our creativity to make up for what we lack in tools or pans.

There are condos in Florida and there are large homes in Florida and homes of in-between sizes. I often dream of having a large home, and I’m not exactly sure why. (I seriously just googled the address of a large home in our area to see if it was still for sale. It is. My dreams aren’t dead yet!) Even when I’m not dreaming of a large home, I’m wishing for more space. When we moved here five years ago, our kids sharing a room didn’t seem like a big deal, but now, their tiny bedroom is just not enough. Or so I believe. They spent all of vacation sharing a room without much complaint.

How much space do I really need? How much stuff do I really need? In Florida, my mindset was that the condo was a home base of sorts. It wasn’t for spending large amounts of time, although one afternoon, our party of seven gathered there for an hour or so after we got caught in the rain. Sure, we were using every available seat in the condo, but it’s one of my favorite memories from this vacation. We were on the go a lot, and honestly, all of Florida is like a communal back yard, so maybe it doesn’t work the same in a place where we actually have winter. But I’m looking at our space and our stuff differently.

What do I really need?

—

I’m not terribly adventurous. You might know this about me or you might not. I have my moments of brave spontaneity but these times are rare and they always cost me something emotionally (and sometimes physically). At home, I tend to stick to what’s safe and predictable and usual. The adventure can wait for another day because it’ll always be here, I think.

On vacation, though, it’s sometimes now or never.

Here is a partial list of what I experienced on vacation that I could have missed if I’d have insisted on sticking to what made me comfortable:

  • I went to two local farmers’ markets with my husband on day 1 because we wanted fresh local vegetables as part of our vacation diet. Yes, we also went to the grocery store, but a farmers’ market as a tourist felt weird to me. But we had a nice conversation with the couple selling vegetables at the first market and found a sweet deal on fresh corn at the other. (Not to mention the pineapple.)

    I snapped this as quickly as possible to prove we’d all been to the top then hightailed it back down with my son who said, “This is creepy.”

  • I climbed 200 steps to the top of a lighthouse, held my breath as I made a quick lap at the top, and went back down. And while waiting for the rest of my family to find us, I found an exhibit of Cuban rafts that had washed up in the area over the years.
  • I took a ferry across the river to a national park site and climbed a narrow ladder to the top of the fort.
  • I walked across a drawbridge in St. Augustine and then waited on the bridge as it raised and lowered to let a boat through.
  • I led my mom and daughter through the streets of St. Augustine to find an ice cream place while we waited for the men in our group to retrieve the car from the other side of the bridge. (It was maybe going to rain again.)
  • I ran on the beach by myself, with my husband, and with our daughter.
  • I tried boogie boarding with my kids. In the ocean. (Let’s talk about this huge achievement. The ocean awes and terrifies me.) I even let the fish nibble my toes a little as we stood watching the waves. (It is the weirdest feeling.)

And then there were the detours and side trips that added time to our vacation but also unforgettable memories.

On the way home, we needed to stop somewhere to eat our packed lunch. My husband suggested we drive into Savannah and eat at the park right in the heart of the city. It was a Saturday and I immediately thought of all the reasons not to: parking and people, chief among them. Staying on the Interstate, stopping at a crowded rest area made more sense to me, but sometimes the call of the natural world is so persistent, I cannot ignore it. We found parking on a side street right next to Forsyth Park (and parking, it turned out, was free).

Not a bad “rest” area

We lugged our picnic lunch into the park, which was full of people but also trees draped with Spanish moss. We met a man who wanted to sing for us, and we saw an owl and two hawks in the trees. We got back in the car refreshed and traveled some back roads to return to the interstate.

Our destination on day one of the return trip was Hillsborough, North Carolina, where some friends of ours live. (This is a longish part of the story. Bear with me.) The first surprise there was the uniqueness of their home. It’s an old historical house that sometimes gets mistaken for being open to the public. This was where we would spend the night. (What was not a surprise was how welcomed we were. Our friends are hospitable hosts. When I’d originally started planning, I figured we’d end up in a hotel. Staying with friends is a thousand times better.)

When the kids started to get rowdy after dinner, our friends took us on a walking tour of their town. At one point, my friend commented on a house we were walking by and said it belonged to Allan Gurganus. “He’s an author,” she said, and I wondered if I should know that name. She mentioned that Hillsborough has a lot of writers living there. I asked what this man had written. She said his most famous book was “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” and I exclaimed because I’d heard of that but never read it. (Writer and reader friends, this is where you may feel free to disown me, although how can I possibly keep up with all the writers and books everywhere?!)

My spine tingled a little as we passed his house and I kept thinking about what she’d said about all the writers who lived in this beautiful little town. We finished our pleasant walk at the park where the kids chased fireflies and a frisbee (which eventually ended up in a tree), and we took the river path back to their house. Our kids fell asleep in all corners of the house and it was such a restful way to end a day of driving. The next morning, over coffee, the authors of Hillsborough thing was mentioned again, so I searched the Internet to see who else might be living nearby. Only one other name stood out to me, and I nearly dropped my coffee mug.

“Phil!” I exclaimed to my husband. “Annie Dillard lives here!” Granted, I have only read one of Dillard’s books but she is so well-respected among the writers I know that our house contains many of her books that I have every intention of reading. She is a poetic, spiritual, artistic voice, and I WALKED THE SAME STREETS SHE WALKS. (Sorry for the shouting.) This was the second surprise of our side trip, something I wasn’t even aware could possibly happen. Never mind that I wouldn’t know Annie Dillard if I bumped into her on the street, but just the thought of such a talent being nearby sent me into a fangirl frenzy I clearly have not quite recovered from.

We left our friends that morning a little bit unsure of where we would go next. We wanted to visit another national park on our way home, but we had trouble deciding which one. We finally decided to drive toward the Blue Ridge Parkway. It wasn’t exactly “on the way” but it wasn’t necessarily out of the way either. Our route took us on backroads through North Carolina and Virginia. The mountains loomed larger on the horizon. We stopped for lunch and then found our way to the first visitor center. We only planned to drive the Parkway for 20 miles or so, yet it added hours to our return trip.

But it added depth to my soul. (I can’t speak for the others in my family.) At the gift shop where we bought our souvenir puzzle (we have a collection from most of our adventures), my husband handed me a magnet with the well-known words from John Muir: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

“I saw this and thought of you,” he said with a smile.

It is true. Something happens to me in the mountains. I feel more like me. Those added side minutes on the parkway made the rest of the drive bearable and worth it. The views left us in awe, and my husband got to try out a driving feature on our new-to-us car as we wound our way up and down and around the mountains.

I can’t even with this picture. It’s like a painting.

It was nearly dark by the time we arrived back at our house, and we all pretty much collapsed into bed. We could have arrived hours earlier if we hadn’t gone to the mountains. We could have been home almost a day before if we hadn’t stopped to see our friends.

I regret neither of those decisions and I will continue to remind myself post-vacation that the fastest most direct way is not always the best way. I will try to keep my eyes open for surprises and take a risk now and then on something new and different.

—

Vacation is good but it’s not forever. At least, it’s not for me. Maybe there are some who could turn an endless vacation into their real life, but I can’t do it. I have to get back to the ordinary stuff of life.

Vacation also isn’t perfect. I could write another entire blog post about all the things that didn’t go as planned during the week. There was something every single day that kept my expectations from soaring too high. But this, too, I can keep after vacation is over.

Life is good, but it’s not forever, so seize the now-or-never opportunities. And life isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable.

We don’t bring home a lot of souvenirs from vacation–pictures, puzzles, postcards, a small gift for each of the kids–but the lessons and the memories will last from now until the next time.

And, I hope, beyond.