by On many drives to visit Doug’s family in Pennsylvania, we’ve passed by the unmissable signs for the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia, Penn. On more than one occasion, I’ve longingly said “look, Turkey Hill and ice cream”, but there was never enough time to stop. We’ve now made the time thanks to Van Life, but I’m not convinced we should have.
We hadn’t even made past the ticket area into the museum before I whispered to Doug, “I’d pay more for an adult-only experience.” Weren’t these kids supposed to be in school mid-day on a Friday? It was very loud, as people of all ages zipped around the place, all high on sugary iced teas and ice cream. Do I sound old?
The “experience” is a series of displays and interactive exhibits, primarily about making ice cream, and (I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to say) it’s really for kids. There is no factory here — the main Turkey Hill manufacturing facility is about six miles away, and interesting fact: they generate all of the power for their factory with two wind turbines!. Besides the history of Turkey Hill, visitors get to design their own ice cream recipe (which you’ll need to create and taste test at home), create the packaging for it, and then record a commercial for it.
There are also free samples of various flavors of Turkey Hill Iced Tea and lemonade (holy sticky floor, Batman!). And of course, there were samples of ice cream, which tasted better than I remembered. Another fun personal fact: I was once a die-hard Turkey Hill ice cream fan, but they sadly changed their recipe and I moved to Breyers.
We upgraded our ticket to include a session in the “Taste Lab.” Here we received a pint of chocolate or vanilla ice cream and then were led through the process of flavoring our own ice cream. First, we added drops of concentrated flavoring such as lemon, strawberry, teaberry, or mint. Next we added “inclusions,” mix-ins such as nuts, chocolate chips, or candies. Finally, we swirled in a “variegate” such as peanut butter, apple, or marshmallow. There was no stopping you from adding as much or as little as you’d like. I found the flavoring didn’t seem to do much, and the variegate turned everything to a gloppy mess. Doug liked how his came out (lemon-orange ice cream with coconut, unicorn sprinkles and strawberry swirl); mine was just “eh”. There were a whopping 80 people in this class!
