The 2022 Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Champion Trailblazers are…. 

The Gillman Family! 

This year’s winning family took the opportunity to get out and see Maryland, and venture off the beaten path while completing the 2022 Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail! Mom Sarah, Dad Michael and their two kids set out this summer to experience the best Maryland has to offer! Sarah has kindly provided the below recap of their adventures, including special memories about each stop!

Congrats to the Gillmans on being this year’s champions! Stay tuned for information about the 2023 Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail, kicking off next summer! 

Prigel’s was our first stop on this summer’s tour! We have loved going to this creamery for years; it’s always so fun to see all their cows out in the fields right beside the shop. We’ve enjoyed some really fun events there in the past as well; our favorite has been their make-your-own ice cream event. When we visited them on the ice cream trail this year, we really enjoyed watching the farmers herd the cows across the street to their other field on the other side of the Long Green Road. They have plenty of nice outdoor space to enjoy the ice cream, and the fresh air and farm views.

Our next stops were at the Harford County creameries, Brooms Bloom and Keyes, which we visited on the same day. Before hitting these, we enjoyed a round of mini-golf in Bel Air. At Keyes, we enjoyed sitting outside and watching a bunch of skydivers parachuting nearby. 

Next up we went to Chesapeake Bay Farms on the way home from a trip to Assateague. We enjoyed seeing the ponies on Assateague then we enjoyed seeing the cows at Chesapeake Bay Farms. It was fun to go off the beaten path in an area we’ve been to many times but never really explored beyond getting to our destination. Continuing in the ‘leaving the road oft traveled’ vein, we also explored even more on the way home, getting off the highway once again in Cecil County to drive through some truly beautiful countryside to visit Kilby Creamery in Rising Sun. We enjoyed visiting with their farm animals and taking photos with their selection of cut-outs (your head in an ice cream sundae! etc.)

Our next creamery was Woodbourne Creamery in Mount Airy. It was a lovely destination that we will definitely return to. Not only did we get to enjoy the ice cream, but we were able to enjoy picking our own peaches in their farm and visiting their fields of cows, including several baby cows! The highlight was definitely the baby cows by the milking barn; our whole family had so much fun there.

Next we visited South Mountain Creamery.We enjoyed feeling like we were right in the middle of the farm, and we enjoyed that they had lots of fun places for kids to play.

We enjoyed a trip to Rocky Point Creamery after a trip to Harper’s Ferry. My older son was really excited to see soft-serve ice cream on the menu! We also loved the antique tractor and the sunflower field. 

We also loved the soft-serve at Deliteful Dairy, a really cute shop, and we loved the scenic views of the mountains and enjoying driving up and down some big rolling hills to get there. We really enjoyed meeting some of their animals and loved that they had signs with all of their names, so our kids could really feel like they were communicating on a first-name basis with the cows, ponies, and goats. 🙂 

Our last stop was Misty Meadow Farm. We enjoyed driving down some beautiful roads to get there and then enjoyed touring the National Shrine Grotto in Emmitsburg. 

 We had an absolute blast completing the ice cream trail this year. The experience was so much fun. It gave us something fun to work toward as a family, and it gave us reasons not only to go to some parts of Maryland we had never been, but also to go off the beaten path in places we have been many times before. We’ve made many trips to Assateague and Ocean City, but have never gone just a few miles down the road to see lovely places like Chesapeake Bay Farms. We’ve crossed the bridge at Point of Rocks many times in Virginia, but never gone down the little local road right before you hit the bridge; now we know it leads to the awesome Rocky Point Creamery! 

This was a rough year for our family; both of my parents were ill and ended up passing away this summer; being there for them meant little opportunity to do any big summer traveling. We were so glad to have a special reason to travel locally to a bunch of really lovely places in our own beautiful state and to celebrate so many fabulous Maryland farms! My grandfather was a farmer in Southern Maryland (and other members of our family still farm there), so I have a very special place in my heart for our Maryland farms and we loved being able to visit and support so many. 

We’ll definitely be making many return trips; we still have so many places we want to explore in Maryland, and now we’ve gotten used to having exciting new ice creams everywhere we go- that’s a tradition I’m happy to continue!

Thank you all for coming up with this really fun event. We had a great time participating. And winning ULTIMATE BRAGGING RIGHTS is the perfect cherry on top! 🙂

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