Chocolate and Pretzels

We drove two more days in the van before we reached our destination.  Thanks to construction near Chicago, the first day dragged to 13 hours.  Ugh.  But we arrived safely in Goshen Indiana to stay with our friend's parents.  Ten hours later, we were back on the road and arrived early evening to Akron PA.  Oh, so lovely to fall into a comfortable bed and not have to worry about getting up so early....

Well, sort of.  Carl was schedule to facilitate orientation meetings so while the rest of us were planning to rest and relax, Carl was working.

While Carl was in sessions and meetings all day, the kids and I did some excursions around Lancaster County.  We decided to drive to Lititz and head to the local Pretzel and Chocolate factories.  The kids had the chance to roll pretzel dough and we learned that the Sturgis family shaped the pretzel the way they did to represent a child's arms in prayer.  We saw the ovens they baked them in and how the mistakenly baked-twice pretzels became the crunchy snack ones.  After the tour we had a soft pretzel and a bag of crunchy ones.

Then we walked down the street to the Chocolate Factory.  They say that main street in Lititz actually smells like chocolate and they are right.  I would find it very hard to live in that town and not consume a copious amount of chocolate every day.  We couldn't go into the actually factory, but the displays and video were informative.  We watched intricate candies being formed out of chocolate and then quickly made our way through the shop.  Elena started gasping and grabbing for candies, so we made our purchases and left before she would start hollering.

In all a pretty good foodie day.