What I Did On My Spring Break: Day Three

Friday, March 19, 2010

What I Did On My Spring Break: Day Three

Wednesday was an eventful Spring Break day. Not that the other ones haven't been. It's just that we were especially mobile on hump day.

We:

Woke up early
Took a long nap
Wore lots of green (hello, it was St. Patrick's Day)
Drove Route 66 (Did you know that it winds right through the heart of Tulsa?)
Toured a giant ice cream factory.

Wait. What? You didn't know there's a giant ice cream factory just minutes from Tulsa? Well, there is. It's Blue Bell Creameries, and it's southeast of T-Town in a little town called Broken Arrow.

Not only are there mass amounts of ice cream being mixed, packed and shipped from a plant a surprisingly short distance from Tulsa proper, but Blue Bell Creameries is also generous enough to offer tours of their production facility for a song. Tours are just $2 for adults. Kids aged 6-18 get in for $1, and anyone under age 6 gets in free.

While Blue Bell doesn't allow cameras on the tour (think Willy Wonka, his chocolate factory and his fierce protection of his trade secrets and you'll get the gist of what I'd like to imagine in my little fantasy world is going on in the ice cream industry), they do provide a free scoop of ice cream in pretty much any flavor you'd like at the end of the tour.

Hubs chose Black Walnut. Kiddo wanted chocolate.

As for me, I wanted mint chocolate chip. My favorite.

You get cool hats, too.

At least, I think they're cool.

Blue Bell Creameries in Broken Arrow is also home to the Blue Bell Country Store, a clearinghouse of cutesy, kitschy Blue Bell stuff. We're talking everything from ice cream scoops to coffee mugs that look like pints of ice cream.