We didn’t have room last week to talk about West End Creamery, so we are featuring it this week. We happened upon it when leaving Purgatory Chasm and were delighted with the great find! It’s right down the street from the chasm, which we reviewed last week, and is worth including in a trip to the chasm or to visit by itself. West End is open until 10:00 pm to it’s easy to include in any trip.

West End Creamery is a family run business that offers more than just a cold, tasty treat. It includes an 18-hole miniature golf course, a farmland petting area, and large fields to create your own activities such as Frisbee, running around, or rolling down the hills (which we saw many kids doing).

We’ll start with the important part, the ice cream! While they do not make it on site, it is local to Massachusetts. West End offers close to 50 flavors of hard ice cream along with frozen yogurt, sherbet, and several low/no fat options. Standard vanilla, chocolate, and swirl soft serve is available as well as frappes, iced coffee, fountain drinks, Rickies, and Del’s lemonade. They have a small ice cream on the menu for children 3 and under, and it’s priced right at 95 cents. You can bring your dog, too – “Puppy Licks” is a feature for your canine child.

A large outdoor deck overlooks the West End Creamery property and provides ample outdoor seating to enjoy your ice cream. Go inside for additional seating and a view of the model train that snakes its way around the inside perimeter of the building. Our kid tried his hardest to follow the train all the way around, but we had to stop him from entering the ice cream work area!

Any time we encounter those 18 plots of artificial turf it’s hard to resist, and the West End Creamery mini golf course is fantastic. The course is superbly decorated with traditional farm equipment, gardens, 7 different ponds, 2 waterfalls, and a working 6 foot gristmill. Great, but how does it play? This one is tough with the hills, but doesn’t have too many crazy obstacles, so if you can play the hills right you should do well. Golf costs $7.50 for adults, $6.00 for kids 4-12 and is free for those 3 and under.

A new attraction to the West End Creamery is the Farmyard, which is setup in the barn down the hill from the golf course (following the paw prints on the ground to get there). This barn provides viewing and petting of some small farm animals. This isn’t a full-fledge zoo of course, but kids always love to see animals and it’s a nice add-on when visiting West End.

If the outdoor deck is packed or you just want to get away from the crowd, take a walk down the hill (or roll like the kids do) where there are a few picnic tables and a path to walk along Swans Pond.

Mom Says: Waffle cones are made right in front of you so you know they are fresh. For an extra treat, ask for a warm one; otherwise they are served cooled off to avoid melting the ice cream.

Dad Says: I rarely pass up an opportunity to get ice cream and play mini golf, so I loved this place. The ice cream was great and the service was solid from the local employees.


West End Creamery
481 Purgatory Rd
Whitinsville, MA 01588
www.westendcreamery.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 2:21 am and is filed under Places to Go, Sites. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed , or if you would rather receive an e-mail, please subscribe to the e-mail in the lower right hand corner of this page. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.