By: Sam Dostaler

It is 10 a.m. on an overcast and chilly mid-July Saturday. The feeling of impending rain hangs heavy in the air and puts a slight damper on a summer weekend. Visitors to Cold Hollow Cider Mill in Waterbury Center, Vermont wander up and down the aisles browsing the gourmet food items, Vermont-adorned clothing, and ornaments. Once their wandering is done, they make their way up the counter and usually add some apple cider donuts to their final checkout tally.

However, I’m at Cold Hollow Cider Mill for one item on the menu, and it isn’t a donut. Yes, the donuts are delicious! But even at this mid-morning hour, when most people are more focused on the maple syrup that ends up on a pancake, I am dead set on one item and one item alone. A maple creemee.

I don’t remember the first time that I had a maple creemee, but I can remember when I fell in love with the smooth, sweet taste, complemented nicely by the crunch of a cake cone. It was on my first trip to Littleton, New Hampshire, in 2016, from an ice cream stand that no longer exists. During that five-day trip, I may or may not have had one maple creemee a day. Not including a bonus one I purchased on the way out of town on the final day.

Living my whole life in Connecticut, ice cream is of course a summer staple. Homemade ice cream shops are scattered throughout the state. Droves of people stand in line each night, sampling any number of flavors and combinations. But one flavor you don’t often see on the menu, much less ordered? The maple creemee.

Soft serve ice cream slowly entered the national picture in the late 1930s and gradually became more prevalent, especially in the Midwest prior to World War II. In the early 1950s, several soft serve brands began to appear. One such brand was Cree-mee. Originating in Illinois, the brand by 1955 had several locations in Vermont.

However, you have to fast-forward nearly 30 years from the original Cree-mee stands to 1981 before the first maple creemee was introduced by the Rutland County Maple Producers at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland.

Now, over 40 years later, can you imagine driving past a Vermont ice cream stand and not seeing a hand-painted sign advertising the maple creemee?

“Creemees are so in right now,” Vermont Creemee Passport founder Adam Rice says. The evidence? There are 185 maple creemee locations in Vermont alone. The southernmost location is just across the Massachusetts border at the Guilford Country Store in Guilford, while the northernmost location is April’s Maple in Canaan, one of two Vermont towns to share a border with both Canada and New Hampshire.

“Its higher milkfat content makes the taste of the creemee,” continued Rice. “That is what makes it richer and creemee. Additionally, it’s often naturally flavored, with maple being the most iconic flavoring. A maple creemee is the ultimate summer snack in Vermont. It combines local Vermont milk and locally made maple syrup.”

Earlier this year, riding the creemee momentum and some family inspiration, Rice launched the Vermont Creemee Passport and, as of the publication of an early June article in Seven Days, had sold more than 1,500 books.

“The inspiration was my father-in-law's love for creemees,” Rice, the head of the unofficial Vermont Department of Creemees, said. “For his 85th birthday in late March, I made him a passport with gift cards to his favorite creemee stands. The gift (and my mother-in-law's support) was the inspiration for the Creemee Passport.”

Rice, whose Instagram account has already surpassed 3,000 followers, had no idea the momentum and buzz the project would create. “We wanted to launch at the beginning of the season to catch the creemee excitement and wave for 2026. It organically started this year, though everyone who experiences the passport asks why it wasn’t created sooner.”

Rice, who has had 80 maple creemees from 45 different stands himself, can’t answer that question. But what he can do is encourage everyone, during the fleeting Vermont summer, to have a maple creemee or two.

Back at the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, I am finally handed my maple creemee. As I walk outside to find a seat on the porch, I notice a white piece of paper with a logo taped to one of the doors. It is the Vermont Creemee Passport logo.

One maple creemee down. 184 to go.

*Editor’s Note: Some information provided by the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association

A Trolley Ride at the South Shore Line Trolley Museum (East Haven, CT)

“All aboard the 1:30 trolley,” rings the call through Sprague Station. The rest of the passengers had already made their way out of the station and onto the New Orleans Public Service 850 trolley that sat waiting for us in the glistening sun.

We hastened outside, and once our tickets were punched, we found our vintage seats and stepped back in time. Moments later, we heard the unmistakable clank, clank as the trolley slowly lurched into motion.

It was a warm, brilliantly sunny day, and as we traversed the 1.5-mile out-and-back track of the South Shore Line Trolley Museum, the wind whisked through the trolley, providing natural air conditioning. We first traveled through the trolley barns, and on the way through, we passed numerous trolleys, including one that used to travel through Brooklyn and past Ebbetts Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The trip soon moved out of the trolley barn and through the surrounding salt marshes, flanked on either side by parties of crabbers and wildlife.

Eventually, the trolley reached the end of the line, turned around, and made its way back to Sprague Station. To modern civilization. But not before we experienced what those before us had.

Taylor City. A Town That Is Part of Two States.

Population 5. Number of states? 2. Number of towns? 2. Number of counties? 2.

A dual-hamlet, Taylor City sits right on the border of New Hampshire and Maine. Part in Carroll County, New Hampshire, making up the town of Effingham; the rest in York County, Maine, making up the town of Parsonsfield.

Today, the town is best known for the Ye Olde Sale Shoppe. Built in 1815 by Benjamin Taylor, the shop, which today sells various curiosities, was previously utilized for a variety of town needs, including the town post office, a stage stop, and a general store that sold the necessary items of generations past.

Days Cottages (North Truro, MA)

“When I was little, my grandmother used to tell me about a place near Provincetown, where there were little cottages on the water where artists, writers, and creatives would rent these little cottages and spend a couple of weeks.”

Those are the words of Coastal Granddaughter’s Heidi Drexler from No. 3 when speaking of her coffee table book cover photo.

In the 1920s, Joseph A. Days, much to the dismay of those in Provincetown, wanted to move his house to a stretch of beach in North Truro. Well, Joseph wasn’t too concerned with what the citizens of Provincetown thought, buying a stretch of “desolate packed dirt and beach sand that became known as ‘Days’ Folly.”

The Great Depression hit in 1929, and Joseph never did move his house, but he had another idea for the area that is known as Beach Point. So in 1930, he had nine cottages overlooking the water built, plus a rental office, a grocery store, and a summer home for himself and his wife. The Days Cottages opened in the summer of 1931.

96 years later, the Days Cottages still open their doors every year. Through hurricanes, Nor’easters, restorations, and the passage of time, the now 22 cottages persevere.

Editor’s Note: Information courtesy of Days Cottages

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The Nor’easter: No. 6 - Publish Date: August 20

The Nor'easter - Stories of New England. The people, seasons, places & traditions. Building a community for those who are New England.

The Nor’easter is a publication of the New England Travel Journal