I’m not sure I have ever been so excited for a summer. At least not since I began working steady jobs after high school. A big part of this excitement are my plans to have a “Monday Fun Day with Dad”, this summer with the girls. Thanks to a new career as a travel agent where I have flexibility in my schedule, each Monday I’m going to be taking day trips throughout the great state of Ohio and I’ll be writing about these experiences.
For a long time I have noticed so many people who live in an area never take the time to explore it. People who live in LA have never toured Hollywood, or people on Oahu have never experienced the Polynesian Culture center. It seems crazy, but then you look around and realize there are so many cool things to do in your own city or state that you take for granted. A lot of those things are inexpensive and in some cases FREE.
Our first stop is in Utica, OH, the Velvet Ice Cream Factory. Utica is only about an hour away from Columbus, so it is an easy day trip. Besides the Ice Cream factory there are also orchards in Utica which are a lot of fun to go and pick apples in the fall. Just a fun fact for those of you who thought Utica was a one trick pony.
The Velvet Ice Cream company is a family owned business that has been around for over 100 yrs! It is under it’s 3rd generation of owners and the 4th generation is starting to now learn the business. It’s founder, originally started selling strictly to a 5 mile radius. Why just 5 miles you ask? That is as far as he could go on his bicycle without the ice cream melting. They now cover about half the US and produce over 5 million gallons of ice cream each year.
Velvet offers a free tour weekdays 11am to 3pm from May 1st thru October 31st. The tours last about 30 minutes and most days feature live production. It is good for any age person, but spoiler alert, no free ice cream at the end. I was pretty bummed about that, so if you read this Velvet Ice Cream team, put that one in the suggestion box.
You start out the tour in a building with a guide who shows a short video about the history of the company. The tour then moves over to give you history of the property “Ye Olde Mill” which includes background on how it was at one time, part of the underground railroad, and other interesting historical tidbits. After that portion of the tour you move on to the Viewing Gallery of the production facility.
The production facility has a room with historic ice cream making machines. They explain to you how they used to make it and then move on to the modern, current process. On days when they have live production going on, you can actually watch the process as it’s happening via a glass viewing wall. The kids (big and little) really enjoyed seeing the production line live. It was cool to see the ice cream shoot into the containers and then the automation as the lid was added mechanically and it moved its way through shrink wrapping and into deep freezing.
After the tour you can head over to the restaurant / ice cream parlor to get a taste of the ice cream. We actually ate lunch there before the tour and the food was great! After the tour we each got a different flavor of ice cream and then headed to the nature trail to walk it off. There is a playground, shelter/Pavilion and a 2 catch and release fishing ponds on the property. For more information visit their web site at http://www.velveticecream.com/visit/tours. If you would like to see more pictures from our fun day at Velvet, check out our Velvet Ice Cream Facebook Album.