Monday, August 11, 2008

Duluth Maritime Festival

Well about two weekends ago there was this (what we thought) small festival happening in Canal Park and we thought it'd be fun since three sailboats were coming, blah blah blah. Well, 25,000 people later, we quickly realized that this was NOT a small festival. We were SUPER fortunate to have three authentic sailboats from the early 1900's come to the Duluth Port. Our plan to tour the boats was pretty much gone when we heard on the radio there was no more available parking in DULUTH, and that if you were able to walk there, you'd be in line for hours. Well, we never got to tour them obviously, but we went on a harbor cruise and I got some cool pictures of the boats. The sails aren't up, but they are still beautiful!

This is the Niagra (also the largest of the 3 boats that came). This one has real cannons on it, and they actually shot cannon balls out into the harbor- which we didn't get to see, but you could hear it over in Superior (about 6 miles away) and people who were in Canal Park said it shook buildings!!:





I can't remember which one this is. This is the "middle" sized one. I couldn't get a good picture of the small one.




Here's Olivia and I. She was TERRIFIED when the boat started out (we've done this cruise a few times with her) because this is the first time it was a really choppy ride. When the boat went out onto the lake, it was rocking and rolling- you could barely stand up. Water was spashing up the front of the boat- I was getting sea sick! But once we toured the harbor, it was just fine. That's what a 5 mph wind does on our big lake.






Jack on the other hand, LOVED it, and was squealing during the whole thing. :)