People always say there are never any guarantees in life. While that may be true most of the time, I think I have found an exception. I can guarantee that once the magical goodness that is Penn State University ice cream hits your mouth, you will be guaranteed joy in direct proportion to bowl size. In fact I will take this time to warn you right now. Do not eat Penn State ice cream, it will forever ruin you. You will never enjoy anything as spectacularly creamy and delicious as this ice cream. All other ice cream will be referred to as ‘that garbage’. I even heard a story of a man who spent 3 months hitch hiking his way from Seattle on Chicken trucks to get to the creamery. Alright, I made that last part up but you get the idea.
Penn State started producing dairy products in 1865 as part of their agriculture school. They began offering dairy short courses shortly there after. People still come from all over the world to attend the short courses. In fact you might recognize some of their students. Two men by the names of Ben & Jerry. That is right they learned how to make it right there in Penn State.
So what does this have to do with a blog about flying you may ask? Well it makes a great day trip and I recently did it with my friends Matt & Pascale. The university is served by University Park airport KUNV which is 5mi from the creamery. The flight left Morristown MMU to pick up my friends at Wings Field LOM and then to University Park. We navigated using VORs on the way there. Lately I feel like I have been following the magenta line too much. It was good to know I can still track a radial and actually get to my destination.
When you are about 10min out make a call to unicom and ask them to call a cab. As you approach the airport from the east you will have Nittany Mountain in between you and the airport. This airport recently added a control tower and the charts aren’t completely updated so check the notams for frequencies etc. As you can see the airspace is designated Class D but the airport still shows uncontrolled. However the tower is most definitely there and active. We were told to fly around the mountain and report a left downwind for 24.
We were marshaled to a parking spot and walked right into the terminal. The woman at the desk was very friendly and told us our cab would be there shortly. Since we wanted to spend a few hours there we had the cab drop us off downtown to get some food. It is your typical college downtown lots of restaurants, diners, and even more places selling blue and white lion garb. The creamery is a short walk from downtown.
You may want to look ahead at the half-gallon flavors if you intend to bring some home. So many students bring home ice cream for their families that they have a special thermal bag you can purchase to keep things cool. You can also bring your own cooler. Either way they provide you with enough dry ice to keep everything frozen for the ride home. Before this trip I took a few orders from friends so I ended up leaving with 9 half gallons. It was pretty heavy so we debated leaving Pascale at the airport and taking the ice cream. A man has to have priorities right? OK so it wasn’t THAT heavy no one had to be left behind.
The cab rides were about $12 each way and there are no landing or ramp fees if you get fuel. Overall it made for a fun trip and something a little different from your typical $100 hamburger. If you give it a shot let me know how it worked out for you. Oh and I will take a half-gallon of Peanut Butter Swirl thank you very much.
Uber works great here too