Trail of Chocolate

Sorry for the long gap between posts; I've been traveling for the past nine days between Denver, Boston, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. William and I jaunted to Boston for my nephew's baptism and made it a series of reunions with family and friends. We had two wonderful dinners in the city with my college roommates and their families and two great days with family out in Marshfield. More to come on the Boston trip . . . but sufficient to say that we wined and dined on sea food (try scallops wrapped in bacon at Quincy Market!) coffee and chocolate. My roommate Tara shares a love of coffee and chocolate and her husband professed alarm that all three kids and his wife have had some chocolate before 8am on a typical Saturday morning.  That certainly didn't shock me - or William - as we relied on dark chocolate M 'n Ms and Dunkin Donuts coffee (the coffee just for me) to keep up our torrid pace.

A love for chocolate guided the whole family through the second half of our Fall Break travel. MnM's World in Las Vegas was one of the highlights of our trip, a "must see" on the first day. The kids have all but forgotten the spectacular flowers and artwork of the Wynn hotel/casino and the mock gondoliers at the Venetian; their memories are full of the candy wall and the free candy corn / white chocolate MnMs that were tossed like confetti in our direction. We did get some exercise walking the malls and bodysurfing at the magnificent wave pool at the Mandalay Bay, before dining at the Convention Center food court and returning to take in the lights of the Strip  from our 39th floor hotel room. The Luxor sent a beam of light into space while the Ferris wheel turned and the screens at MGM Grand played all night long. We sat and stared out the window for a long time, then crashed back to reality - and ate more candy.

The Grand Canyon was magnificent and deserves its own post (or two or three) but suffice it to say the candy theme continued. Ranger Lance, who gave two ranger talks that we attended, used a peanut MnM as a metaphor for earth's geologic structure. He said the peanut was the "hot, soft solid" and the chocolate was the middle earth and the thin candy crust is what we live on. The metaphor worked perfectly for our family and will undoubtedly surface in all future geography lessons. Despite missing Halloween, I think we had enough candy to make up for lost trick-or-treats, and Rob already made sure that our new MnM dispenser will be full for a long time by stocking up at CostCo, where the MnMs are a lot cheaper, but not quite so exciting, as in Vegas.