It is high summer in New England. Field corn flaunts its new tassels. Morning glories unfurl their vibrant trumpets. Seaside arcades whir and ding from morning well into night. Mosquitoes raid and pillage with unparalleled blood lust.

When the siren song of a road trip calls at this time of year, answer it. It is a rite of the season. Sadly, so is biting back road rage as you stew in the sluggish parade of cars clogging the highways that lead to the sea.

This gives the curving, narrow back roads of the region more allure.

Which is why I recently found myself cruising beneath the white pines and Eastern hemlocks along Outlet Road in New Gloucester, Maine, to honor another sacred summer ritual − visiting a roadside ice cream stand.

My last column focused on this neck of the woods, just

See Full Page