Out for Ice Cream

Begin your journey at Walnut Beach Creamery, a colorful spot just a block from the beach in Milford. You’ll find basics (coffee, pistachio, coconut, etc.) as well as homemade seasonal specialty flavors on the menu, along with intriguing house standards such as Mad Mollye (cinnamon-infused chocolate with Oreo cookies) and Walnut Beach Mud (Belgian chocolate with chunks of espresso brownies).

Next, make your way up to Cheshire, where Sweet Claude’s has been dipping homemade ice cream behind a pillared porch on Route 10 for the last 25 years. There are lots of daily changes in the ice cream menu, with Caramel Cashew, Nutella and Claude’s Cupcake among their “signature flavors.” Toffuti, sorbet, ices and frozen yogurt round out the menu.

Does everything have to be all ice cream, all the time? Of course not! Round out this day with a stop at Quassy Amusement Park on Lake Quassapaug in Middlebury, where more than two dozen rides await. Try out the water park at Splash Away Bay, the classic wooden roller coaster Wooden Warrior, the throwback paddle boats on the lake, and FRANTIC, just named one of the country’s most exciting new theme park rides by America Online.

The next day brings a resumption of your important ice cream research with a drive out to the University of Connecticut campus in Storrs and a visit to the UConn Dairy Bar. UConn retains a herd of dairy cows whose fresh milk and cream end up in the delicious products served here. The Dairy Bar’s ice cream has been named “Best of Connecticut” on several occasions, and you may well agree.

The final stop of this delightful journey is Buttonwood Farm, a working dairy farm in Griswold where the country views are superb and the ice cream is made from scratch. The list of flavors here is daunting, from Chocolate Brownie Batter to Jungle George to Orange Pineapple.