A Bite Out of the Buckeye: On the Way Home from Michigan

Dad's

Route 33 (near Indian Lake)

New Hampshire, Ohio

September 7, 2009

4:30ish pm

As mentioned before, we make the drive to Michigan and back quite often. Because of this the drive has become quite boring and tedious. This happened, say around the 350th time we've done it (not the 349th, that one was still okay :) ). Because of this we've tried many alternate routes in what we say is to try and find a quicker route, but in reality it helps break up the monotony.

Earlier this summer we attempted a route that takes us out Route 33 for a longer period of time and around the western part of Indian Lake rather that taking route 174 which took us around the eastern part of Indian Lake. While I truly doubt this little change saved us any time, it did allow us to stumble upon another piece of Americana called Dad's.

This is the classic roadside stop that Route 66 was invented for ;) Big classic sign outside, walk up window, family run, you sit outside on picnic tables, everyone knows your name (cue Cheers theme song) etc. etc. These are the kind of places I miss by living in a bigger city. These are the places you imagine your son's baseball team congregating at after a big win and stopping at to help prolong a successful first date. You can almost here John Mellencamp's Small Town or Jack and Diane playing as you walk up. This one is primarily an ice cream stand, but has ventured into some dinner fair such as hamburgers, funnel fries, french fries, fried cauliflower, fried jalapenos, fried broccoli etc. Just kidding with the fried broccoli, but I thought it'd help get the point across! Basically, you're not coming here for health food, but you are coming here for small town comfort, hospitality, and a brush with the past.

Earlier in the day we had filled up on an excellent Labor Day lunch, but we thought ice cream would hit the spot and sustain us for the rest of our drive home. We had a hard time deciding which flavor to try or to go with soft serve or hand dipped. There were lots of hand written suggestions from various high school workers (e.g. The Julie is chocolate ice cream with marshmallows on top. The Rocco is chocolate peanut butter with whipped cream and sprinkles). We both opted for hand dipped ice cream on a cone. The ice cream was Ruggle's and I had the Black Cherry while my husband had Raspberry Chocolate Chip Cheesecake. A cake cone was our only option. This slightly saddened us because we both prefer a sugar cone, but we've found more and more places only offer a cake cone or a choice between cake or waffle cone. To me the cake cone just doesn't have much flavor and a waffle cone is just to0 big for the one dip I usually strive for. But oh well, it's truly not that big of a deal.

My Black Cherry was great! Lovely flavor with tons of big chunks of cherry. However, I was not so fond of my husband's Raspberry Chocolate Chip Cheesecake. I think maybe there were too many flavors going on. The chocolate tasted of pretty poor quality and there was an artificial flavoring taste that I didn't care for. But that's just my opinion. My husband was happy enough with his selection, even though he did state next time he'd try something else. All in all it was ice cream at a place with more character than most. I was pretty happy with it.