Sterling

Sterling Ice Cream is on 62 just southeast of 190. It's a fairly large building but there's only really one or two ice cream windows; the other half of the overhang is for fried food and hotdogs, and the other half of the building is "Cafe Fresh Bagel" (which seems to be what has the drive-in service, not sure if you can get ice cream on that side - the bagel places closes at 2, so it's definitely a separate thing.) At least for the summer there's a huge tent with a dozen picnic benches; there's also a vast amount of parking. It's about half a mile from the Davis Mega Maze; it's also not far from Rota Spring Farm Ice Cream.

While tagging pictures, I discovered that this was not my first visit; I was there 11 years ago and had a soft serve dip cone - which seems to no longer be on the menu.¹

I got Monster Mash (lots of candy and cookies in a vanilla base) and Butter Pecan. The Monster Mash was ok, but not nearly as creamy as you find at most ice cream places around here; it may have just been the vanilla base, I should try their "Extreme Chocolate" for comparison. They also had a "Campfire S'mores" and a "Maine Black Bear" flavor.

This is also the second place I've seen listing "Ice Cream Nachos" - the other one was Friendly's who call it "Sugar Cone Nachos". (They also have frozen yogurt, sherbert, and coconut-milk-based "vegan" ice cream.)

One of the places I go for wildlife photography and exercise is Wachusett Dam, in Clinton - convenient parking on Route 62 at the top of the dam, and a pair of 250ish step staircases down into the basin and back up the far side. (There's also a more gentle but much longer access road if you're at the bottom and find the stairs overwhelming - which is also a prettier path if it's Fall and the leaves have started changing.)

Turns out that the closest ice cream place is Rota Spring Farm (around the northwest side of the lake - on what is basically a shortcut from 110 back to 62, which you can take to 190 to 2 and be directly on the fast path back to Boston; alternatively, if you're doing the Fall Tourist thing, Davis Megamaze is right there too.) Plenty of parking, the shop itself is a couple of serving windows under an overhang, with another window for hotdogs and subs, as well as a "farm stand" shop. Lots of picnic tables (including a handful under an overhang) with a very New England-scenic view of the adjacent farm with cows and goats (the farm is down a small hill and wasn't a strong smell, but it had just rained for 20 minutes before I arrived.)

First Visit

One thing that the more interesting ice cream places have in common is concocting their own flavor mixes, and naming them. While at this point things like "Moose Tracks" (vanilla ice cream, chocolate swirl, chocolate chunks) and "Green Monster" (mint chocolate chip with chocolate cookies) are reasonably consistent across the state, more advanced combinations need more of an explanation. While the server was happy to explain "Ruby's & Onyx" (chocolate chip with maraschino cherries) when I asked, they also had a detail menu with all explanations (right next to the serving window - I didn't notice it before I asked, but that's on me.)

I ordered a large, and since that's three scoops the server asked which one I wanted more of - which ended up with me getting three flavors instead of my usual two: Butter Crunch, Graham Central Station, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl.

The butter crunch was actually "crunchable" - sometimes the crunch bits are too solid to safely bite down on, this didn't have that problem. The ice cream itself was good - not as strong as the Bright Yellow variant from Chelmsford Creamery but that was unique; this one was fine, and the "crunch" part was far above average.

Graham Central Station (which as a train geek I picked just for the name as anything) turns out to be a Graham Cracker Ice Cream with chocolate-covered graham cracker pieces - which turned out to be a better "S'mores" ice cream than any of the ones I've had so far that were trying to be. They should add a sundae that's just this, a dollop of marshmallow sauce, and wave a torch over it for ten seconds.

Finally, the Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl. This is one of those where the peanut butter makes the chocolate taste more chocolate (or maybe decades of Reese's ads have eaten my brain.)

In the future when I go for three flavors they probably shouldn't all be complicated multi-component ones, but they're so tempting...

Future Visits

I'll definitely try Cowabunga Crunch, Coffee Oreo or Cappuccino Chip, and Maine Wild Blueberry. They also have meatball and roast beef subs made from "[their] own grass fed beef" but the non-ice cream bits of the shop close down at 7 so it would need to be an earlier visit.