Annie Sheldon Weekend soccer and baseball games mean outings for that warm-weather favorite—ice cream! We’ve rounded up our favorite scoop spots in the Bay Area. San Francisco Mitchell’s Ice Cream 688 San Jose Ave., open every day from 11:00 am — 11:00 pm. This long-established Mission favorite has been serving delicious specialty ice cream, sorbet, and sundaes for over 50 years. There’s some indoor seating. Price: Inexpensive Online:  www.mitchellsicecream.com Bi-Rite Creamery and Bakeshop 3692 18th St.,  open Sunday thru Thursday 11:00 am — 10:00 pm, Friday and Saturday 11:00 am — 11:00 pm. The ever-popular Bi-Rite Creamery uses mostly organic, local milk products to make its sweet treats. They serve popsicles, sorbet, sundaes, and ice cream sandwiches, as well as cupcakes and cookies. They recently added a soft serve window to the store. Price: Inexpensive Online:  www.biritecreamery.com Swensen’s Ice Cream 1999 Hyde St., open Tuesday thru Thursday and Sunday noon to 10:00 pm, Friday and Saturday noon to 11:00 pm. This tiny retro-style store in Russian Hill is known for its rich, creamy, flavorful ice cream. The sticky chewy chocolate is one of their best sellers. Counter service only. Parking is tricky, so plan accordingly. Give the kids an extra thrill and hop on the 45 from Union St. and let the bus carry you to the top of the hill. Price: Inexpensive Online:  www.swensensicecream.com Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous 699 22nd St., open Tuesday thru Saturday 11:30 am — 6:00 pm, and Sunday 11:30 am to 5:00 pm. This newcomer to the cream scene popped up in Dogpatch a couple of years ago. It gets our nod for inventive flavors in big scoops, as well as an industrial-chic decor that makes standing in line less of a chore. Price: Moderate Online: Read our review from when it first opened. Smitten 432 Octavia St. This newcomer is a high-tech wonder—proprietor Robyn Sue Goldman developed the Kelvinator, which uses liquid nitrogen to make ice cream in 60 seconds. That means kids can watch it go from a liquid to a solid while they wait for their scoop of fresh strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, whatever they please. Price: Moderate Online: www.smittenicecream.com East Bay Fenton’s Creamery 4226 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, open Monday thru Thursday 11:00 am — 11:00 pm, Friday and Saturday 9:00 am to midnight, Sunday 9:00 am to 11:00 pm. With over 30 flavors of ice cream and sherbet, you’ll be spoilt for choice at this super-popular (it was even featured in Pixar’s Up ) sit-down ice cream parlor. Try one of their yummy mix-and-match sundaes. Price: Moderate Online:  www.fentonscreamery.com Gelateria Naia 2106 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, open Sunday thru Thursday noon to 11:00 pm, Friday and Saturday noon to midnight. You’ll love the vast array of scrumptious hand-made all-natural Italian gelati and sorbetti served here. The gelati is made only with rBGH-free milk, and the sorbetti with fresh, ripe, local, seasonal fruit. Price: Moderate Online:  www.gelaterianaia.com Ici 2948 College Ave., Berkeley, open Monday 2:00 pm — 9:30 pm, Tuesday — Thursday noon — 9:30 pm, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday noon — 10:00 pm. Ici is owned by none other than Chez Panisse’s former pastry chef Mary Canales. Needless to say their ice cream, sorbet, and sherbet are all fit for a prince (or princess!). Ingredients are all organic, local, and sustainably-raised, plus everything is either compostable or recyclable. Price: Moderate Online:  www.ici-icecream.com Scream Sorbet 5030 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Open until 11:00 pm on weekends. Bakesale Betty’s new neighbor keeps up the culinary tradition establishing this part of Temescal along Telegraph as “gourmet ghetto south.” The seasonal flavors change weekly, but pineapple-guava and anything with coconut are sure winners. Price: Moderate Online: screamsorbet.com IScream 1819 Solano Ave., Berkeley Although it just opened last month, Solano Avenue’s new scoop shop has been getting raves for its chocolate and mocha almond ice cream flavors, as well as its lemon sorbet. Price: Inexpensive Online: Not yet! Tucker’s Supercreamed Ice Cream 1349 Park St., Alameda, open Tuesday thru Thursday 11:00 am — 9:30pm, Friday and Saturday 11:00 am — 11:00 pm, and Sundays and holidays noon to 9:30 pm. Tucker’s set up shop in 1941 and has been here ever since. They serve over 33 flavors of ice cream, sorbet, and sherbet. Their ‘Tornado Machine’ will custom-blend frozen yogurt flavors — try one in a freshly-baked waffle cone. Price: Inexpensive Online:  www.tuckersicecream.com Contra Costa Loard’s Ice Cream 3080 El Cerrito Plaza, El Cerrito, open Monday thru Thursday and Sunday noon — 9:00 pm, Friday and Saturday noon — 9:30 pm, and in Orinda at 230 Brookwood Rd, open Sunday thru Thursday from 11:00 am — 9:00 pm and Friday and Saturday 11:00 am — 10:00 pm. Loard’s ice cream parlors have been a Bay Area favorite since the first one opened in 1950. They’re a small chain but feel more like a mom-and-pop store, and serve over 40 flavors of rich and creamy ice cream, as well as sorbet, sherbet, and a ‘lite’ version of their ice cream. Check out their website for a full listing of northern California stores, with a few now open in the Peninsula. Price: Moderate Online:  www.loards.com Peninsula Romolo’s Cannoli and Spumoni Factory 81 37th Ave., San Mateo, open Wednesday thru Saturday 11:00 am — 6:30 pm, Sunday 11:00 am — 4:30 pm. If you love all-natural, authentic Italian desserts, this is the place. Try their famous ice-cream-filled cannoli, or opt for a fresh fruit sorbet or granita with a couple of cucidati (sugar cookies). Price: Inexpensive Online:  www.romolosfactory.com Rick’s Rather Rich Ice Cream 3946 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto, open Monday thru Thursday 11:30 am — 9:00 pm, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11:00 am — 9:30 pm. This gourmet micro-creamery offers no less than 48 flavors of hand-made ice cream, as well as their version of a popsicle, called ‘frozen ice.’ Their newest creation is the Whoopie Ice Cream Sandwich. Try a white chocolate ginger or fudge marble cone. They also make yummy sorbet, floats, and sundaes. Price: Moderate Online:  www.ricksicecream.com Preston’s Candy and Ice Cream 1170 Broadway, Burlingame. Open Monday 11:00 am — 6:00 pm, Tuesday-Thursday 11:00 am — 8:00 pm, Friday and Saturday 11:00 am — 9:00 pm, Sunday 12:00 pm — 6:00 pm. Love to support local old-timey businesses? Then Preston’s is the place for you! They organize annual contests like “guess how many jelly beans in the cookie jar” with cool prizes, and are always a hit with kids. Price: Inexpensive Online: www.prestonscandy.com Powell’s Sweet Shoppe 1166 Howard Ave., Burlingame Yes, it’s a bit gimmicky, but your kids will explore the place with wide-eyed wonder at the candy piled to the ceiling. Grab a scoop of gelato and hit the row of movie seats to view some of  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. P.S. There are Powell’s locations in Los Gatos, Novato, Berkeley, and Lafayette. Price: Moderate Online: www.powellsss.com/go/ Marin Three Twins Ice Cream 641 Del Ganado Road, Terra Linda, north San Rafael, open Monday thru Thursday 1:00 pm — 9:00 pm, Friday and Saturday noon — 9:30 pm, Sunday noon — 9:00 pm. You can’t go wrong no matter what you order here — it’s all absolutely delish. Everything is organic, and their cups and spoons are compostable. Sit inside, or out on the patio on warm days, or order a pint of ice-cream or sorbet to go. NOTE: Three Twins Ice Cream has opened a little store in San Francisco at 254 Fillmore St. It’s open Monday thru Thursday noon — 10:00 pm, Friday and Saturday 11:00 am — 11:00 pm, and Sunday 11:00 am — 10:00 pm. Price: Moderate Online:  www.threetwinsicecream.com Fairfax Scoop 63 Broadway Boulevard, Fairfax; open every day from noon to 10:00 pm, Cash only. This tiny place always seems to have a line outside. It serves scrumptious, all-organic ice cream, soy ice cream, and sorbet, and makes its own waffle cones. Price: Inexpensive Online: Not yet! Noci 17 E. Blithdale Ave., Mill Valley. Open everyday 11:30 am — 10:00 pm. OK, we know it’s gelato, but it’s so rich, delectable, and creamy (love the chocolate) that we had to include this artisanal scoop shop. They cater to people with nut and gluten allergies, too! Price: Moderate Online: nocigelato.com Photo caption: Scoops from Mitchell’s Ice Cream in SF. (Red Tricycle) More from Red Tricycle: Kid friendly restaurants Bay Area summer camps Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

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It’s bad enough that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has to deal with an endless stream of compliments from President Obama for being the inspiration for Obamacare. But now Romney’s getting praise from Al Gore, too? All poor Mitt needs is a nice word from Barbara Streisand and he’ll have locked up endorsements from conservatives’ three most prominent villains representing their three most hated parts of society: the federal government, environmentalists, and Hollywood. Related: Ron Paul Raised $1 Million Overnight At a New Hampshire town hall earlier this month, Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy when he said, “I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that. … It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.” In response, Rush Limbaugh said Romney could kiss the Republican nomination goodbye. “Good for Mitt Romney,” Gore wrote on his blog , as The Hill ‘s Jordan Fabian notes. “While other Republicans are running from the truth, he is sticking to his guns in the face of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party.” Given that he has to fight conservatives’ anger that he signed into law a bill that mandates individuals buy health insurance–the part of Obama’s health care overhaul that conservatives hate the most–it’s interesting Romney would take such an unpopular position among his party’s base (Limbaugh called climate change a “hoax.”). But Romney has said global warming is real for years , and perhaps he’s even more afraid of being accused of yet another flip flop . Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

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This story was updated at 3:54 p.m. EDT. Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years. The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum , the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated. The results of the new studies were announced today (June 14) at the annual meeting of the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held this week at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. “The solar cycle may be going into a hiatus,” Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory’s Solar Synoptic Network, said in a news briefing today (June 14). The studies looked at a missing jet stream in the solar interior, fading sunspots on the sun’s visible surface, and changes in the corona and near the poles. [ Photos: Sunspots on Earth's Star ] “This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Hill said. “But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.” Spots on the sun Sunspots are temporary patches on the surface of the sun that are caused by intense magnetic activity . These structures sometimes erupt into energetic solar storms that send streams of charged particles into space. Since powerful charged particles from solar storms can occasionally wreak havoc on Earth’s magnetic field by knocking out power grids or disrupting satellites in orbit, a calmer solar cycle could have its advantages. Astronomers study mysterious sunspots because their number and frequency act as indicators of the sun’s activity, which ebbs and flows in an 11-year cycle. Typically, a cycle takes roughly 5.5 years to move from a solar minimum, when there are few sunspots, to the solar maximum, during which sunspot activity is amplified. Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle’s period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle , Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots. [ Video: Rivers of Fire Inflame Sunspots ] Hill is the lead author of one of the studies that used data from the Global Oscillation Network Group to look at characteristics of the solar interior. (The group includes six observing stations around the world.) The astronomers examined an east-west zonal wind flow inside the sun, called torsional oscillation. The latitude of this jet stream matches the new sunspot formation in each cycle, and models successfully predicted the late onset of the current Cycle 24. “We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it,” Hill said. “The flow for Cycle 25 should have appeared in 2008 or 2009. This leads us to believe that the next cycle will be very much delayed, with a minimum longer than the one we just went through.” Hill estimated that the start of Cycle 25 could be delayed to 2021 or 2022 and will be very weak, if it even happens at all. The sun’s magnetic field In the second study, researchers tracked a long-term weakening trend in the strength of sunspots, and predict that by the next solar cycle, magnetic fields erupting on the sun will be so weak that few, if any, sunspots will be formed. With more than 13 years of sunspot data collected at the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona, Matt Penn and William Livingston observed that the average magnetic field strength declined significantly during Cycle 23 and now into Cycle 24. Consequently, sunspot temperatures have risen, they observed. If the trend continues, the sun’s magnetic field strength will drop below a certain threshold and sunspots will largely disappear; the field no longer will be strong enough to overcome such convective forces on the solar surface. In a separate study, Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force’s coronal research program at NSO’s facility in New Mexico, examined the sun’s corona and observed a slowdown of the magnetic activity’s usual “rush to the poles.” “A key thing to understand is that those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the sun,” Altrock said. “Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the sun.” Altrock sifted through 40 years of observations from NSO’s 16-inch (40 centimeters) coronagraphic telescope. New solar activity typically emerges at a latitude of about 70 degrees at the start of the solar cycle, then moves toward the equator. The new magnetic field simultaneously pushes remnants of the past cycle as far as 85 degrees toward the poles. The current cycle, however, is showing some different behavior. “Cycle 24 started out late and slow and may not be strong enough to create a rush to the poles, indicating we’ll see a very weak solar maximum in 2013, if at all,” Altrock said. “If the rush to the poles fails to complete, this creates a tremendous dilemma for the theorists, as it would mean that Cycle 23′s magnetic field will not completely disappear from the polar regions. … No one knows what the sun will do in that case.” If the models prove accurate and the trends continue, the implications could be far-reaching. “If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill said. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.” You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow . Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . Photos: Sunspots on Earth’s Closest Star Rivers of Fire Inflame Sunspots Mysterious Origins of Dark Sunspots Explained Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

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