Day Trip to Brenham: Bluebell Creameries

We have wanted to check out the ice cream tour at Bluebell Creameries for a long time.  But it is hard to justify a two hour trip for a forty-five minute tour.  This year, D really wanted to go, so I looked around the area to see what else we could find to do, and wham, found the Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park twenty minutes away.  Perfect!

With that in mind, we decided to make a day trip to Brenham.  I intended to get a much earlier start (I alway intend this), but we didn't get out the door until around 9:30am.  Combine that with my poor navigational skills and complete disregard for the google map that I printed, GPS system and smart phone with navigation in the car... we arrived just at noon.

I admit, I had no idea what we were in for.  I feared that they would be on lunch break at noon, and we might have to wait until they returned for our tour.

Not at all.  The factory was packed and the tour process very formalized.  After paying the admission fee, we received our token for the 12:10 tour.  During the summer months, tours seem to leave around every twenty minutes, and include up to 40 people.  Ours was full.

The tour takes about 45 minutes and finishes with a scoop of ice cream of your choice.  And it was really fascinating, from the bare facts (milk from 60,000 cows every day!), to the automation (the only non-automated task is placing the icecream gallons in boxes for shipping).  We decided that we really needed to get a home version of the ice cream sandwich machine, churning out 120 sandwiches per minute!

Combined with our trip to Washinton-on-the-Brazos State Park, we really enjoyed our day trip to Brenham!