No more car

The drive  down I -95 on Friday went swimmingly.   It rained a good bit of the way (haha!).  Luckily traffic on I-95 was very cooperative.  Edda’s sad moans of  “No more sit”  quickly morphed into “No more car” after the first few stops. She’s a smart little cookie and a good traveler  (I admit to Granny bias).

Edda loved Bayer’s electronic toys–she’s a tech junky.   The adults enjoyed  watching the cousins together as we congratulated ourselves on how brilliant they are.   One neat weekend event was movie night in Claire’s  (daughter #1) neighbor’s driveway Saturday night.  How cool is that?

We are staying at Casa di Rossi (Steve’s sister and her husband) in the Villages until Friday.   We’re going to Punta Gorda on Wednesday to visit with Steve’s cousins and have ice cream at Harborwalk Scoops & Bites.  I  look forward to  wonderful ice cream and feeling like I’ve really started on the TABICS2015 list.

I’ll let some pictures take the place of several thousand words:

Lori

Trip Planning 101

We leave in a few days to visit #1 on the TABICS2015 list– Harborwalk Scoops and Bites in Punta Gorda, Florida.  I like road trips, but HATE the planning and packing part.  I like vacations where all I have to do is show up.  My Millenial daughters would tell me to get a checklist for my smartphone so I don’t forget essentials like deodorant or toothpaste.  I’ve had too much going on lately to make a list.  Maybe next trip….

I was thinking about what to say today while I was getting ready to work out at the Y.  My brain’s stream of unconsciousness spit out the idea of Facebook as a blog.  What if you took your status posts and check-ins and ran them together?  It would be kind of like a scrapbook of your life.

This trip will be longer than most because we are stopping in South Carolina on the weekends before and after Florida to visit our grandson.  Well, we’re visiting his parents too, but any grandparents reading this will understand why the grandkids get the focus.  They’re just so cute!  My granddaughter (and her mother!) are traveling with us so the cousins can spend some quality time together.  South Carolina will make nice bookends for Florida.  I’ll try to remember some of the fun memories from the drive to share with you.

I emailed Harborwalk to make sure they will be open and not closed seasonally since it would be really dumb to drive all the way to Florida and not get ice cream.  The proprietors, Claudia and Ron, were very welcoming and excited that we are coming.  Here is an excerpt from one of Claudia’s emails:

Hi Lori,

Now, it’s Claudia! 🙂

Ron told me about your idea and… how super cool it will be to do that??? Please let us know when you are coming to make sure we will be there to meet you. ….

So, I am curious, so you may or may not want to humor me answering my questions…

Where do you live? How will you be going around the country to visit all the top 10 ice cream shops? Have you ever done something like that before? Will you blog it about it? (I think people would love to share your experience!!!! I know we would!!!), etc, etc, etc..

Anyway, it will be SUPER fun!!!

This IS going to be SUPER FUN!!!

Lori

Scream!

I never expected to write a blog.  It’s scary.  I mean, you put yourself out there and what if everyone (or even some people) hates it?  This blog is about ice cream, though, so at least a few people will like it for sure.

Have you figured out the blog name yet?  I SCREAM YOU SCREAM WE ALL SCREAM WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM!   Get it?  My daughter is my tech support and thinks people will figure out the name on their own. In other words, you’ll all get the joke without coaching.

So why a blog about ice cream?  First of all, it’s one of my favorite foods.  When I was growing up I would ask my Mom if we could have ice cream for dessert.  She always wanted to know how I had room after three (sometimes four–eeep!) helpings at dinner.  Believe it or not, I was a stick as a kid.  Literally.   My arms and legs looked like twigs.  I told Mom that ice cream melts and fills in the chinks.  True, right?

Second, and this is key–someone shared a link to the Business Insider article about TripAdvisor’s 10 Best Ice Cream Shops of 2015.  I had the great idea to visit all of the shops on the list (I call it TABICS2015 for short).  My husband Steve got very excited when I ran it by him.  Steve’s favorite thing to do is eat out, so it wasn’t a hard sell. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a full meal or not.  A plan was born.  We are going to visit all of the TABICS2015 in order over the next 10 months or so.  I said  on Facebook that I am going to do it but no one believed me.  They should know better.

Here’s a link to the article  in case you want to preview our journey:  Ten Best Ice Cream Shops in America 2015

We leave for the first stop on our adventure in a couple of weeks.  Harborwalk Scoops and  Bites, here we come!