We Did The Entire Butler County Donut Trail In One Day Because Sugar Makes You Strong

 

.....or it does something bad to your A1C. My doctor definitely mentioned one of those!

Whatever. The point is, you know we love ourselves a trail! My favorite trails so far have been the Garfield Trail, where the kids earned fun patches for their Girl Scout vests, the Southern Indiana Ice Cream Trail, where we were promised T-shirts but they ran out so instead they gave us hats and Mr. Craft Knife was so distraught about this downgrade that the little kid designed us all our very own We Licked the Southern Indiana Ice Cream Trail T-shirts (Lactose Lovers Unite!), and the Dayton Aviation Heritage Trail, where we earned my very beloved Wilbear Wright who comes with me on all my travels now because his namesake used to love going new places (such as the sky!).

Oh, there was also the full year that I dragged everyone around on an Indiana Culinary Trail because I wanted a set of wine tumblers!

We love a road trip, and we'll take one on the stupidest excuse. Because if you don't make a stupid excuse to go on a road trip, then how will you discover that there's a restaurant serving authentic British cuisine north of Indianapolis? Or a giant rock in Southern Indiana that you can hike to AND buy an anthropomorphized version of on a T-shirt?

How, I'm asking how, HOW WOULD YOU OTHERWISE learn that people are simply allowed to build their own experimental aircraft, as long as they get it inspected by authorities to make sure that it's not literally just a flying bomb

I'm telling you my greatest lesson so far: if you don't follow life's off-beat trails, you'll never discover life's experimental aircraft that are allowed to fly at life's unmonitored airfields.

Also, it was the big kid's birthday, we were all in the precious same place at the precious same time, and we all had the whole day free. That in itself is a sign that it was meant to be!

Fun fact: we'd originally planned to do this whole Butler County Donut Trail not on the big kid's birthday but on July 5th, which we also all had free. But then when I went through all the donut shop websites to get their opening hours, I discovered... well... DID YOU KNOW THAT EVERY DONUT SHOP IN BUTLER COUNTY IS CLOSED ON JULY 5?

Genuinely, what is that about?

So anyway, a couple of weeks later, on a day that is safely not the day after a federal holiday, off we went upon a strictly ordered trail that maximized the somewhat limited opening hours of the busy independent donut shops of southwest Ohio:

It's funny, because this place had what would turn out to be my absolute favorite donut of the day. Actually, I think this thing is my absolute favorite donut of all time! I'm thinking about it right now and wishing I had it in front of me.

Here it is, in the photo below. Any guesses?

Nope, not the plain glazed that the big kid always likes. Not the fried cinnamon roll that the little kid tried. It's this glorious beast:

It is a giant croissant, flattened somehow and covered with chocolate ganache and chocolate chips. It was INSANE.

And it turns out that there were two Ross Bakery locations on our donut trail map, so I got two of them!

Organizational note: you can freeze donuts. We all basically ordered whatever we wanted at every stop, did not even attempt to eat it beyond the first couple of stops, and put everything into individual plastic baggies inside a bigger freezer baggie when we got home. To warm donuts up you can microwave them for a few seconds until they taste like they're hot from the fryer, or you can do what I do and put the plastic baggie with your morning donut in it out onto the kitchen table the night before to defrost.

If only I could remember what my doctor was saying about my A1C...

Oh, well. Maybe it will come to me after I eat 11 more donuts!

You know you've been on the road too long/eaten waaaaay too much sugar when you, as a family, cannot stop laughing about what is objectively a perfectly normal sign that you don't even have a decent photo of because the person who was supposed to be taking the picture did not understand the assignment. Regardless, there was a storefront for a pizza restaurant. With a bar. That proclaims that it is OPEN TILL LATE NIGHT. For the rest of the entire day, we were all, "Omg, it is 11 pm and I would like an alcohol. I wish there was a BAR that was OPEN TILL LATE NIGHT!"

"Well, *I* wish there was a BAR OPEN TILL LATE NIGHT that also had pizza!"

"But only TRUE SLICES of pizza! Not slices of falsehood!"

"So you want, like, a combination TRUE SLICE PIZZA/BAR OPEN TILL LATE NIGHT?"

I dunno, y'all. We'd gotten up pretty early for this. We hadn't eaten any protein yet other than the bacon on Mr. Craft Knife's maple bacon pizza three donut shops ago. I think we were all a little loopy.

Actually, I just looked up that pizza place, and their tandoori chicken pizza sounds DELICIOUS.

Loopy as I was, I also lost my damn mind with glee when I discovered that Jupiter Coffee and Donuts was having a Summerween event that week!

I'm pretty sure I got one of every Summerween donut, though they're currently still in the freezer.

This was my second-favorite donut of the day. Something something sour cream something?

The beauty of us all being free this day to do the donut trail is that it was actually a weekday, so we could go straight to the Butler County tourism office with our completed passports to pick up our shirts.

On the way, we were all, "Omg, they're going to be so excited that somebody completed the trail! They're probably going to want to take photos of us for their social media--is everyone's hair nice? Ooh, what if we're interviewed? Should we have talking points?"

Lol. We had to STAND IN LINE to get our shirts, there were so many people there for the exact same reason. #notsoquirkyafterall 

But our goal was indeed achieved!

The kids never did inherit the passion for free T-shirts that their father and I honed during college, when people would put tables outside the Student Center offering free T-shirts for signing up for a credit card--AND WE ALL DID IT! I blame their disdain on the fact that 1) I don't think colleges (or the finance industry?!?) allows that kind of shit anymore, and 2) neither of the kids' colleges charge to use the laundry machines, so they do not know the joy of being able to put laundry off for one more day cause you just scored a free T-shirt.

Regardless, Mr. Craft Knife and I still hate doing laundry, and I personally think that these T-shirts are legit. There's a smiling cup of coffee!!! And the donut is holding a little flaaaaaggggg!!!!!!!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!