Favorite Stops & Cool Shops of New England

The very nature of a road trip lends itself to many stops along the way and some even "off the beaten path" places you would miss otherwise. The following were a few of our favorite stops and cool shops we came across during our drive...

Rich Farm Ice Cream Shop... located right off of Rt 67 in the lovely countryside of Oxford, CT. This ice cream shop is cool because its on a dairy farm where they make their ice cream from fresh milk every day. And it has some of the best ice cream we've ever tasted. The smallest size we could get was huge (see picture above). Prices were actually pretty reasonable, too. I had the Purple Cow and Butter Crunch ice cream. That day we enjoyed the hill country of Lietchfield CT and all the little villages that were along the way. One such village was Washington Depot which was a personal interest of mine since it was the place that inspired Amy Sherman Palladino to create Stars Hollow for Gilmore Girls. The Hickory Stick Bookshop was a neat bookstore to brows in Washington Depot.

There were several knitting and yarn shops around which of course I had to go into...
The Knitting Cove in Historic Jefferson Port, NY & The KnitWit of Portland, ME were two such stores.

Mystic CT, Portsmouth NH & Portland ME all had historic seaside downtown areas with plenty of restaurants and neat stores to enjoy by parking and walking up and down the streets. Possibly our favorite store we visited was Whyevernot located in Mystic CT just down the street from Mystic Pizza. When we first opened the door lovely aromas came from within to greet us. From candles to handmade soaps they all smelled heavenly and looked pretty, too. They sell art, jewelry, clothes, pottery, whimsy home decor & the beautiful children's book, Red Sings From Treetops, illustrated by a local painter, author & illustrator, Pamela Zagarenski.



Oh and last but possibly not least we did drop in at Yale University while traveling through New Haven CT. Although the city around the university lacked a little to be desired the university itself was neat to see with its beautifully historic buildings.