East Granby

Cindy's Drive-in is a little two-window ice cream shop off of 202 in East Granby (a bit North of Springfield.) According to their web page, they close for the (2024) season on November 3 - I haven't been there since 2005, when these pictures were taken, so I can't confirm any of that. They do appear to have an extensive soft serve collection, including the re-mixin machine that Goodhile's had, with the same banner; their web menu also includes ice cream and hotdogs, Flurries and Italian Ice, a broad range of toppings, and for travelling pets, the Doggie Delux and Doggie Delight.

First Visit (in 2005)

I found Cindy's on a meandering back-road¹ drive to Connecticut with my brand new Mini Cooper Convertible, and stopping for roadside ice cream was a stereotypical Convertible Driver thing to do (thus the storefront picture above, showing off the car as much as the ice cream shop.) Despite years of experience with New England ice cream serving sizes, I ordered a large vanilla soft serve - and only realized what I was getting into when the server had to unlatch the window to hand me the entire thing.

Note that the ice cream was three or four inches taller than you see here, as I had to eat some of it to get it stable enough to take a picture - one-handed, with the "Nokia Lifeblog Multimedia Diary" software on my Nokia 6630 (the new 2.0 version had just added rudimentary geotagging.) While this seems extraordinarily primitive now, the fact that I could (in a few clicks²) get this picture and dump it directly to flickr was, in Nokia's traditional style, way too early³, almost science-fictional, without actually setting any trends or getting any credit for it.

I made it about halfway through before having to put the rest into a cup so I could finish it on the road (Granby was a half-way point on a longer trip to Western CT.)

Future Visits

My current plan is to get the convertible back on the road for a Summer of 2025 ice cream tour, with Cindy's being one of the early stops. Depending on other plans, I might just do a 20th anniversary recreation of these pictures, monster cone included; it's more likely that I'll do a reasonably-sized chocolate-dip cone instead. If I go for regular ice cream, though, "Rocky Rt. 202" stands out, along with Bear Claw, Graham Central Station, and Butter Crunch; they also currently list an Apple Crisp Delight Sundae. Plenty of choice, but it's a 90 minute drive so we'll see how that actually works out.