You might remember my not-so-patient wait for ice cream during last year’s week-long ride along the East Coast Greenway in Maine. Because of course you should eat ice cream while biking whenever possible.
We were back in Maine this month to visit friends. They said they’d be up for a bike ride …. so off we went on the Eastern Trail, another part of the East Coast Greenway. The section from Kennebunk to Biddeford is hard-packed, not asphalt, and in one spot a bit muddy after some rain. Glad we had the hybrids. It switched to quiet road through Biddeford and into Saco, where we stopped for lunch at a cute cafe with a deck. I, however, was more interested in ice cream. Not on the menu. Fortunately the waitress was a connoisseur and pointed us in the right direction.
So once everyone was fortified with real food (and my “side” of pulled pork had to be the equivalent of a breadless sandwich — somewhere between a quarter pound and half pound), off we headed to Biddeford and and the Sweetcream Dairy.
Oh, hipsters. This place is a registered dairy and milk processing plant. Can your favorite place in Brooklyn, Portland or wherever claim that? It batch-pasteurizes its milk. Locally sourced, of course. Provenance on the website. Maine herbs and fruits. I’d say it’s mostly farm-to-table for the ice cream crowd. And located in a repurposed mill — more hipster points.
“Mostly” locally sourced because how do you get local chocolate? Lemon and poppyseed? Key lime? In that true hipster way, it was well-curated — no 31 flavors and all that. Yet I was tempted by so many — rhubarb sorbet, perhaps?
A couple of samples later, I picked the dark chocolate. But there’s a twist: It was vegan. So not me. No idea what the secret non-dairy ingredient was, but it was awesome. I went for the kiddie size and it was so rich, I really could have used one of the citrus flavors to offset that. (Wonder if they’d do a half-and-half in a cup?) A single scoop would have been too much.
Sweetcream, get yourself a sign to and from the Eastern Trail!
All in all, nearly a 20-mile ride. One day I’ll ride the rest of the trail, from Portland down to the New Hampshire border. Stopping for ice cream, of course.
Exploring by bicycle 