Love is a dip cone
My pitch for adding a hyper-specific itinerary item to your trip planning.
I’m not a bucket list adherent. Although I like the idea of a summer bingo card, that’s also maybe too much like a to-do list for me?
However, at the start of last summer, I did have the feeling that it would be all too easy to let those no-school days slip by without having taken advantage of them in any noticeable way. It was our oldest’s last summer before college. We had dorm-prep tasks giving the season some structure, but we hadn’t planned a family vacation or any other significant events. I decided I needed some kind of organizing principle to ensure we had at least some warm-weather fun.
So, I declared it the Summer of Soft Serve. The idea was to try as many of our local soft serve spots as we could. Roughly once a weekend, the kids and I would head out for cones unknown.
And the results were, well, a little disappointing.
Before you get the wrong idea, let me clarify two things. One, the prompt did its job. Summer fun was, in fact, ensured, and the kids and I had a mission that got us away from the house, away from too much uninterrupted screen time. And, two, we’re talking about ice cream here. About soft swooping swirls and spiraling twists of a sweet, creamy treat. In the grand scheme of things, not particularly disappointing.
But most of the cones we sampled around town were kinda mid (is that still what the kids are saying? unlikely). Some spots got extra points for their nostalgic charm (even where that charm was a worn-out funkiness in their seen-better-days locations), though the flavor wasn’t anything memorable. The Des Moines-area shop with the best ice cream we tried (Dole Whip pineapple swirled with a noticeably superior vanilla) lost points for its far-flung location in a soulless sea of suburban asphalt.
But here’s the interesting thing: The disappointing results of that first summer yielded an unexpected benefit. Because we didn’t strike frozen gold, I’ve made the quest ongoing. Now, every time I have a work trip, every time we plan a roadtrip, I do a little research on the local soft serve options and try to work in at least one taste test.
I’m here to tell you, this hyper-specific locus of attention has resulted in an outsized experience of joy. It gives short outings a bonus add-on and makes planning longer itineraries a little easier by providing a starting point around which other activities can coalesce.
And there have been, finally, some truly standout cones over the last year. Tied for first place, the very best examples so far have both been in Minnesota, discovered along our route to and from Grand Marais. Both are what I’d call gourmet rather than old-school options, and if you’re in either Minneapolis or Duluth, please, please do not miss these spots:
Camp Creemee, part of Wild Side Cider in Duluth, serves up an extra creamy Vermont-style soft serve. Salted maple and black raspberry were on offer the day we stopped in. Both were delicious.
Bogart’s Doughnut Co. in Minneapolis has insanely decadent doughnuts and next-level soft serve. As far as I can tell, they only ever offer two ice cream flavors — brown butter and dark chocolate — excellent on their own, exceptional swirled together.
Another notable discovery is the nondairy oat milk soft serve with halva crumbles and tahini drizzle from Seed + Mill in Chelsea Market in NYC. And I’m very much hoping that on my next trip to Manhattan, the soft serve machine at Kolkata Chai Co. won’t be on the fritz so I can finally sample that one (I’ll let you know how it is when that happens).
Maybe your super specific itinerary item would be high-end resale boutiques or the quirkiest museum in town (if you find yourself in Reykjavik, try the tiny Icelandic Punk Museum, housed in a former underground public toilet, or The Icelandic Phallological Museum, where my son and I spent a fascinating, jet-lagged, and sometimes giggly couple of hours during our first day in the city). Whatever that prompt is for you, I highly recommend adding this kind of focus to your trip planning kit.
Happy travels. Happy weekend.
I have thoughts on ice cream.
* it should have a little salt in it
* you should eat it at Goldie's in Prairie City after a visit to Neil Smith Prairie Preserve, where part of the preservation is an uninterrupted view (which releases seratonin, which may be good for digestion, but I'm just guessing)
* nothing makes me more upset than an overrated ice cream shop, because you can't NOT finish an ice cream cone and when it's not up to speed, I feel so bitter
* there is nothing at all wrong with DQ in a pinch
* it's not soft serve, but the 3- or 4-ingredient vanilla Haagen Daz will fix you when you're broken somewhere deep
Love this and love soft serve. I can’t do a trip to NYC without a Mister Softee with rainbow sprinkles from one of the many trucks along the streets in Manhattan. It’s probably not the best ice cream, but it’s all about the location and atmosphere and nostalgia.