Cone appétit! Come along on the Massachusetts Ice Cream Trail.

My chill assignment was to follow the Massachusetts Ice Cream Trail and get the scoop. This is how it, ahem, churned out.

But first, a primer: Practically every nation on the planet has its own frozen mixtures of milk, cream, and sugar to offset the sun’s hottest hours. In Turkey, it’s called dondurma. In India, kulfi is infused with rose, mango, and cardamom flavors. In Russia, plombir is whipped at regular intervals to ensure it is silky smooth.

Just saying the words “ice cream” soothes and delights, especially in the United States. In 2024, the country’s ice cream makers swirled 1.31 billion gallons of the cool confection, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. The average American eats roughly 4 gallons of it a year. Not all at once, of course. It’s parceled out in glass dishes overflowing with fudge sauce, served in waffle cones clutched like a prize by vacationers with sand between their toes, or rummaged with a sneaky spoon from the freezer in the middle of the night. We love our stashes of vanilla, chocolate, mint chip, and cookie dough.

We love to seek it out, too. The Massachusetts Ice Cream Trail, sponsored by the state’s tourism board and 95 dairy farms, has more than 100 destinations. Some of those stops include visits with bovines like those at Great Brook Dairy Farm in Carlisle. You can scratch a Holstein between the ears and then enjoy a scoop of Purple Cow: black raspberry ice cream with chunks of white and dark chocolate.

Could you fit over 100 ice cream stops in one summer? Better get moooooving.

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