Dairy Hill in Mason

On March 25, last weekend, we went for ice cream. It was the first real ride of the spring. We'd ridden around the neighborhood a few times had made the ride around Lake Lansing, about 12 miles, the day before, but we were all anxious for something a bit more adventurous.

We'd planned a ride up near Midland, MI, but morning thunderstorms made us change our plans. Instead, we picked the ride to Mason, MI, because it was the opposite direction of the nastier weather, and because we'd read good things about the ice cream shop, Dairy Hill. This ride took us primarily straight south and just a little west of Okemos. Today there was a strong south wind, so we knew it would be more difficult traveling to Mason than it would returning. We left home after lunch, around 1 pm.

Our route started off through our neighborhood and west on Bennett Rd out of Okemos into East Lansing. Not too bad with the wind pushing us a little from the east. After a few miles, we turned south on College Rd and into the wind. Our pace slowed and the traffic picked up. College has a decent shoulder and the asphalt isn't too crumbly, but the surface isn't smooth and the traffic is pretty fast and heavy. After few miles we turned east on Willoughby Rd. Willoughby is quite narrow, but smooth and carries little traffic. Turning south onto Hagadorn after a mile or so, and back into the wind, we were on a narrow road with fast traffic, although much less of it than we had on College, and lots of broken asphalt. Once again, it was really tough heading into that wind. At times we were crawling along at only 6 or 8 miles per hour. Eventually, we made it into Mason and found the yummy soft serve ice cream at Dairy Hill. We'd ridden about 14 miles at about 9 miles per hour. We were all tired. My butt hurt. I was questioning the saddle that I was currently using.

Dairy Hill was interesting; a nice, old roadside shop. The kind where you walk up to the screened window to place your order, and sit down at a picnice table in the parking lot to slurp your cream. The building has fresh green and white paint, and the outside seats and picnic tables were well worn, but one of the boys that worked at the shop was out wiping them down with a rag. It was a well kept place. We were the only cyclists there, and perhaps a bit of a spectacle with our shiny blue tandems. Most of the other customers appeared to be locals, perhaps even regulars, and did not really look much like cyclists. I would have thought, though, that they would have at least seen some before.

The next task at hand was to find a bathroom. None were available at Dairy Hill, so we tried the nice park across the street. The main restrooms were still closed for the season, so our only option was a rather unpleasant port-o-potty that lacked TP. Everyone but me passed up that opportunity, and we had the chance to explore the rest of Mason in search of a public facility that met our standards. Eventually we found a suitable potty at a gas station on the west side of town. Hot, noisy, and smokey, but it worked.

The ride home was, as we had hoped, helped considerably by the 20 mph southerly wind. We traveled easily at about 20 mph, once we'd turned north, which was most of the way home. The route home was not a repeat of the route down. We went out of Mason to the east on Columbia for a few miles and headed north on Every. These roads were much nicer in terms of traffic and road condition. The only drawback to coming home this way is it leaves us with a short stretch of narrow busy road on Jolly and Dobie once we're back in Okemos.

We made it. Finishing the ride at about 5:30, we'd traveled about 34 miles. We were all quite exhausted. The kids did really well, and seemed to have a good time. It's good that the ride back was easier than the ride out, or it probably would have been a bit rougher for the last few miles. All of us had sore butts, and Cindy was pretty tired, after having an atypically sedentary winter. We did learn that we need to have more space on the bikes to put jackets as we peel off layers. Quinn and I tied the jackets to the frame of our bike because our saddle bags couldn't hold any more. We have a couple more rear racks and will transfer them onto these bikes, but we'll need a find a second rack trunk for one of them. We could also benefit from an easily accessible map case, and someplace accesible to keep the camera. Note that there are almost no pictures from this ride because it's so hard to keep the camera accessible.

The kids collapsed and rolled around in the grass in front of the house for a few minutes when we got home, but soon were off to the back yard to play. Aren't they sweet?