Peace, Love, and ICE CREAM

Day Three blew Day Two out of the water! What made it so awesome? Two words: Ice Cream!!! Our day was summed up in the words of my friend, Sid: "So your whole trip was a pilgrimage to the Ben and Jerry's factory."
Let me also quote my friend, Matt: "If you're going through Pennsylvania, you stop at Hershey. If you're going through Vermont, you sure as hell better stop at Ben and Jerry's!"
Okay, I'm done justifying my stop at Ben and Jerry's. You really don't need to talk hard to get me to stop at an ice cream factory especially since it was a bucket list item.

Such a great paraphrase of what makes everything about Ben and Jerry's ice cream awesome!

Bucket list item # 10 was added after me and my friend Roger watched the Travel Channel special Best Places to Pig Out.: Meals That Will Blow Your Mind and Tip the Scale. Out of the seven or eight restaurants featured the one that caught our attention was Ben and Jerry's with their Vermonster. The Vermonster is an awesome 20 scoops of ice cream, 4 bananas, 4 ladles of hot fudge, 10 scoops of walnuts, 3 chocolate chip cookies, 1 fudge brownie, 2 scoops of your favorite topping, and an obscenely large amount of whipped cream. It is in every way an ice cream lover's fantasy. Well for us, it became a bucket list item. Roger has a goal to one day try to eat (and I have no doubt that he could do it) the full Vermonster. For me, my goal became the Mini Vermonster. Stupid diabetes. The Mini Vermonster is a sweet symphony of 4 scoops of ice cream, 2 chocolate chip cookies, 2 fudge brownies, 2 ladles of hot fudge, 4 toppings, and a very generous amount of whipped cream. Best thing: It comes in it's own bucket!

The Mini Vermonster with a scoop of Americone Dream, Chocolate Therapy, Chunky Monkey, and Milk and Cookies. My toppings were rainbow sprinkles and chocolate sprinkles. It was so good!

I can't believe I ate that.

Beautiful, isn't it? Don't let it fool you. This little beauty can give quite the sugar rush. It induces mass amounts of skipping and jitters and takes several units of insulin to bring a diabetic's blood sugar down to an acceptable level. But... I finished it!!!

All gone!!!

I like the bucket!

But there's more to visiting Ben and Jerry's than eating an awesomely large sundae. There's the tour and the large display of all of their ice cream flavors.

I didn't know they had that many flavors! Can you believe that Cherry Garcia is the #1 seller? I would of thought it would have been Half-Baked or Phish Food. Not to mention, plain old vanilla made the top ten. Well at #10, but still, why vanilla when you have flavors like Milk and Cookies?

I'm in awe of all the flavors and I have no idea what I am doing with the umbrella. It's not even my umbrella.

Or seeing the flavor lab or the free sample of ice cream which happened to be my favorite flavor, Milk and Cookies! It's a sign that I was supposed to visit on this day.

Can I work in this lab? Please!!!!

I really like this sign.

The sign close up. Pretty awesome, right?

I thought it was pretty ironic that I finished my sample first. I'm a horrible diabetic.

 Or the fun props to take pictures with...

Faith and the milk can.

Me and the milk can. I don't know what I was doing.

Nella and the milk can. Awesome picture!

All of us at the ice cream podium thing. And yes, my eyes are closed.

Roommate photo op?

or the ice cream mobile...

Sadly, this is not the original ice cream mobile that Ben and Jerry used to promote their ice cream. Ironically, the first one went up in flames.

or the arch that has the best motto ever...

Peace, Love, and Ice Cream. Can't say it better than that.

Here is my Rocky-like victory pose under the arch. I finished it!

or the flavor graveyard (and some of my favorite headstones)...

Funniest idea ever! A graveyard for the dead ice cream flavors.

I wish I could have tried this!

This just doesn't sound good. No wonder it didn't make it.

I really wish I could have tried this! I love whoopie pies!

Okay, there are several reasons to visit Ben and Jerry's. We took the deluxe factory tour which included a t-shirt and a pint of ice cream. Try choosing a pint from a freezer that looks like this:

It was so hard to choose just one. I stood there for like 20 minutes trying to make a decision.

Believe me, it was not easy. But Ben and Jerry offered some valuable advice to help our selection go easier.

Hahaha! Love this!

 They also gave rather good advice everywhere in their store.

Too true. I think these guys know what they're talking about.

Well, it wasn't fun transporting four pints of ice cream in the car and keeping them frozen. It's a good thing we had a cooler and that it was a cold day. But for the ice cream's safety it was not allowed to be photographed. Just kidding. I didn't want to introduce extra heat to the system by continuously opening and closing the cooler. But all four pints made it safely to Baltimore and were only a little soft.
Ben and Jerry's was amazing! Good thing that the freezer aisle in my local grocery store contains a piece of this heaven! You may be asking what happened to the bucket the sundae came in. Well, it made it home and has been put to good use.

The whole candy bowl idea seemed very fitting my little friend.