Dunkin Donuts Broke My Heart

But has probably saved me loads of calories. Sigh.

One of the joys of travel is being able to eat at chains I don't have access to in Minnesota like Chick-fil-A and Dunkin Donuts. I grew up on Dunkin Donuts, I remember my mom's friend Diana coming over on Friday nights with a big box of donuts and pigging out. My favorite being the chocolate or vanilla creme filled donut--a donut covered in powdered sugar and filled with thick, tooth-numbing creme. That was the embodiment of donut to me.

Last summer when I went to Maine for the ABA Convention, I ate at a Dunkin every morning. WildBird on the Fly and I loaded up a bag and feasted on our way to Acadia National Park--it was a gluttonous heaven. Alas, those days are gone...

Being on the East Coast this weekend I knew I would have access to lots of donuts. Dunkin Donuts started in Massachusetts--I would be near the mother land by being Connecticut. My first morning I stopped at a Dunkin and asked for the creme filled donut. They didn't have it. I figured this was just an irregularity, so I stopped at another less than a mile away and learned the awful truth--they have been DISCONTINUED. ARRRRRRRGH!

I was short on time and needed to grab some breakfast so I reluctantly ordered a box of donut holes to eat. They were not as good--they weren't what I was craving and looking forward to, they didn't stand a chance of being tasty to me. I ate a fair share of the donut holes and realized it was silly to waste the calories and decided to share the donuts with some gulls. Hence all the photos of ring-billed gulls eating donuts from my hand in this entry.

I haven't been this angry and bitter since Caribou Coffee discontinued the North Woods Latte (it tasted like liquid French toast, it was yummy) --yeah, Caribou, I'm still upset about that. I quit going there for almost a year when that happened and go only sporadically now.

I'm trying to tell myself this is a good thing, a way of the universe telling me that I've been doing so well by current healthy eating habits, why wreck it now? It's hard enough to eat healthy on the road, so losing this donut access will only allow me to have better choices.

No, I want my creme filled donut!

We passed this car in a parking lot and thought it was a fun cloud of herring and ring-billed gulls surrounding a car. As we started taking pictures, the car left. Are they ashamed that they feed gulls?