Blue Bell Creameries Tour & Geocaching
Last week we took a drive to Brenham, Texas.
It’s close to 3 hours away from us. Brenham is home to Blue Bell Creameries and they have tours of the factory. I wanted to stop at the Texas Cotton Gin Museum in Burton which I think was only about 15 minutes away from Brenham but by the time we got there it was almost 2pm and Blue Bell does tours until 3pm so we had to go straight there. We definitely needed to leave earlier.
We were lucky though that we got a tour right away, it was packed and they were starting tours about every 5 or 10 minutes but I heard someone saying that they had to wait an hour and a half for their tour and we only had to wait 5 minutes.
Cameras are not allowed on the tour so I don’t have any pictures but it was interesting. We were told a little bit about the history of Blue Bell and it actually used to be called something else…I don’t remember what…but then they changed the name to Blue Bell because the owner liked Blue Bell flowers. They have a big picture of Blue Bells at the start of the tour along with one of the original factory and one of a lady that used to deliver the ice cream (whose name I also do not recall). The factory in Brenham is the biggest of the 3 Blue Bell factories and they also still use the original factory, also located in Brenham, but only for single items.
After that we moved on and saw where the ice cream is made. We saw several different rooms. Each of them made different flavors. We also walked pass a break room to see if anyone was eating any ice cream. The slogan there at Blue Bell is “We eat all we can and we sell the rest” and the employees are allowed to eat all the ice cream they want.
After the tour we went to the ice cream parlour and everyone on the tour gets a free scoop of ice cream. If you want to buy more or didn’t go on the tour ice cream is $1 a scoop and the scoop is huge…it’s more like 2 scoops. I don’t think I even ate half.
Once we were done with the ice cream and the gift shop we went outside to try to find the geocache. There is a geocache tour for Washington county and the first eleven caches are in Brenham, this was cache number four but we had no luck finding it. I’m pretty sure I was in the right place but I found nothing so if you’ve found this I would love to know if I was looking in the right place.
Once we decided to give up finding this one we moved on to the Brenham Visitor’s Center and picked up The Birthplace of Texas Geo Tour Passport. When you find each cache you record the letter you find in the cache on the passport and if you find at least 10 you get a prize. Cache number 2, Action Alley, was also very close to the visitor’s center and this one we found. It was the first one ever that we’ve found.
After that we went to find cache number 1, Welcome to Brenham. This was at the Washington County Chamber of Commerce and we actually couldn’t find it and then the lady that was there came out and gave us a hint.
Next we moved onto cache number 3, Horseback Riding. This one was located by the antique carousel at Fireman’s Park but we could not find it. It specifically said that there was no need to move any foliage but we weren’t able to see it. It also said it was in a sneaky container so I guess it was too sneaky for us.
By this time it was getting kind of late and we needed to eat dinner so we just went back to the Texas Cotton Gin Museum to find cache number 13 there. By this time the museum was already closed so we just found the cache. This one was easy, especially with the clue.
So, we do not get a prize because we only found three and while it says that there is no end to this I don’t know that we’ll ever go back that way. However I still would like to go to the Texas Cotton Gin Museum when it is actually open and I also wanted to go to The Jersey Barnyard on the way back but we were too late for that too so maybe one day.
