The Adventure in Vermont Continues -- Ben & Jerry's!

So I've been a very, very bad blogger this past month. There's no denying it. I have a couple of excuses: 


1. The internet access I had at my host family's was spotty, at best, and whenever I was able to grab a moment of internet, either at their house or by going to a coffee shop, I had about five million things to attend to that didn't include blogging. Running three businesses while you're out of town takes work, yo! 


2. August was tough on me, my friends. Yes, Vermont was a very great adventure. Probably the biggest adventure I've had since our Greek honeymoon. I saw incredible sights, met some friends for life in the form of my host family, lunched with some Bees, explored the countryside on my own, and performed in an incredible play. But it was also quite the challenge. I missed my husband and doggies and home A LOT, and the working atmosphere at the theater was quite stressful for me.


I'd still like to go back in time, though, and share some of the wonderful things I saw and experienced while I was in Vermont! First up -- the Ben & Jerry's Factory! My incredible godmother, Jana, who lives in Maine, made the trip over to Vermont for the first weekend of performances and brought along her granddaughter, Alex. The three of us spent the weekend having all sorts of fun! This is the view we saw of the factory from the parking lot:

Only in Vermont would a factory be surrounded by trees and greenery, right? I convinced Alex to pose with a cow sculpture, although I'm sure she would want me to tell you that it was only reluctantly:

As a huge Ben & Jerry's devotee, walking up to these doors made me feel like a little girl meeting Cinderella at Disney World. I'm not even kidding.

Once inside, I was giddy to be greeted by a whole wall of all of the Ben & Jerry's flavors in existence!

We soon started the tour, which was a bargain at only $3 a person. It was a short tour, though, so a trip here won't take all day, just in case you're thinking about making plans to visit. We learned about which flavors are the most popular:

I was surprised to learn that Cherry Garcia beats out Cookie Dough...I guess not everyone is as big of a Cookie Dough fiend as I am! Then we got to see the giant room where the ice cream actually gets made. Although it was big, it wasn't as big as I would have expected a room where 300k pints of ice cream gets made every day. Think: the size of a small black box theater. Sadly, you're not allowed to take pictures in that room, so I don't have any. But I did snap a picture of the place where I want to work someday:

I mean, right?? Then we got to dig into some samples and hear about all the flavors that have been discontinued, like one that incorporated kahlua...until the production of that ice cream single-handedly drove up the price of kahlua so high that it wasn't cost effective to make the ice cream anymore! Oops!

We also saw some cool relics from the very first Ben & Jerry's stand, which was run out of a remodeled gas station in Burlington. These are some of the original signs from that stand in the 60's:

And, of course, because it's me and I'm a huge dork/ham, I had to get a cheesy picture with the human-sized faux pint of ice cream!

Overall, I had a lot of fun, but the tour wasn't anything fancy. For all you Ben & Jerry's lovers out there, it's definitely worth the trip if you're in the area. Plus, I got some super cute souvenirs in the gift shop, including an actual combination lock that fits their ice cream pints. No more ice cream thieves in this house ;)

What's your favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor?