Last month I set out on a quest to view the total solar eclipse. If you’ve never seen a total solar eclipse, I cannot recommend it enough. Partial eclipses are neat, but really, absolutely, nothing like a total eclipse. Having that proper understanding, yet living outside of the path of totality, I determined that a quest must be had. I pragmatically picked the closest major city I could drive to without having to pay exorbitant hotel fees. And thus I decided on Indianapolis. Once that was decided the next objective, root beer. I stopped in Wisconsin Dells on the first day to visit the National Root Beer Museum. The second day the family and I had the lunch destination of the Triple XXX Family Restaurant. The last official Triple XXX root beer stand in existence and the first Drive In to open in Indiana, in 1931. The place was packed but we got in after a 30 minute wait and ordered food and brews. The place has the classic diner feel you’d expect, with waitresses with big pitchers of root beer filling up anyone in need. And a good thing too because that root beer is great.
The Body is sweet and rich and creamy with a nice vanilla flavor accenting the classic root beer stand taste. I almost want to say there’s some honey in it? The Bite is mild and smooth, could use a bit more spice but I still like it. The Head is medium and frothy. The Aftertaste is a nice sweet vanilla.
It’s that classic drive-in style I love. I know that the bottled version I tried way back when was kind of an inconsistent mess, but every mug (2 and a half of them this trip) I tried was spot on. The food was amazing as well. I tried a really different burger with peanut butter that was featured on Diner’s Drive-Ins and Dives. It was surprisingly good. This place alone would have made the eclipse quest a success. The fact that the weather was basically perfect on eclipse day made this hands down one of the most successful road trips I’ve ever done.
Back in July I took a road trip down to Okoboji, IA in part because I’ve never been down there and in part because I had learned about The Nutty Bar Stand. The Nutty Bar Stand is a sweet shop/concession stand in Arnolds Park, the oldest amusement park west of the Mississippi river. Arnolds Park has all of the rides you’d expect albeit it they are rather smaller and old. But it’s still good fun and the lines were short and the children and I had a blast running around to different rides until it started raining on us. It was lunchtime anyways so we took a break and then went for dessert at The Nutty Bar Stand. They serve two primary things there. Nutty bars, which are a cube of vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate and then rolled in peanuts, and frosty mugs of root beer, for only $1 a mug. Now that I like! Especially because it’s good root beer.
