Every other year we find our family road tripping it up to the north western corner of Iowa for a conference my husband attends. If you haven’t been up in that direction…..well…..there’s not much to do! And when you have kids with you there REALLY isn’t much to do!
Desperate to find something (anything!) to do I resorted to my favorite travel attraction site Roadtrippers praying that something would pop up on my map! That’s when the Jolly Time Popcorn shop showed up in Sioux City, Iowa! I was SO excited – my kids LOVE popcorn! I wasn’t quite sure what it was but it was better than driving around doing nothing so I quickly put the address into my GPS.
After MUCH confusion and driving in circles I realized that the name in my GPS was under Koated Kernels – the technical name for the popcorn shop! Took me 20 minutes driving in circles to figure that out!
We were pleasantly surprised to open the doors to the amazing smells of candied popcorn, and quickly realized that one side of the smallish room was an ode to Jolly Time’s history and the other 3/4 of the room was a gourmet popcorn shop!
There were all types of sizes and flavors of gourmet popcorn to buy and sample! Above was one of the original popcorn poppers!
To ensure my kids didn’t just run and gobble all of the samples (which they were quite generous to hand out to my eager children!) we paused for a little history lesson on the evolution of popcorn! It only took a few minutes and then it was off to decide WHICH flavors to buy and sample! I pretty much wanted to take everything home with me!
Although I’m pretty sure my husband’s eyes would have popped if I had brought all 20 flavors home with me! Or the garbage sized bag sizes of party popcorn!
If you love popcorn and ever find yourself in Sioux City, Iowa you should add Koated Kernels to your list! It just might be the yummiest and most interesting stop in the area.
Although I gobbled down my white chocolate drizzled popcorn quicker than I could snap a photo of it I did share the Birthday Cake popcorn with the kids and grabbed my husband the Buffalo Blue Cheese popcorn.
And since my father in law is quite the expert of gourmet popcorn and weird flavors – I decided to buy him some Pumpkin Pie popcorn and some Key Lime Pie popcorn – both of which he enjoyed!
If you’ve ever found any treasures to stop at in the Sioux City area in Iowa I’d be delighted to hear of them!! I definitely need more places to stop every time we find ourselves in the area!
Palmer Candy Shop on Wesley Way is terrific. Have you been to the Sioux City Museum, the Art Center, the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Crnter along the Missouri(all free) and the new Launchpad a children’s Museum(admission charge) on Pearl street. And the Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center on highway 12 near Stone State Park. There are many free things for you to do with your kids. I must admit the Koated KernelsKey Lime is my downfall. We are proud of this family run shop.
Oh yes Stone State Park and the Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center are just absolutely fabulous!! I was quite impressed with those and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and Sioux City Museum! Definitely worth making the trip for those! Thanks for the heads up about the new Launchpad – I didn’t know that! I am adding it on my list to check out next time we are up there! I’m probably lucky I’m not closer to the Koated Kernel or my waistline might rapidly expand!
Check out the Palmer’s Candy Shop and Drop Zone, the trampoline park next time you are in Sioux City.
My kids would LOVE the trampoline park! Definitely putting that one on the list!