Parade of Sail

The Tall Ships came to Duluth last weekend.  It was a pretty incredible spectacle for someone who's never seen anything quite so...well, tall - and piratey, before.  We met some friends down by the shore to watch the ships parade past us and into Canal Park.  It was a mess of boys - 5 between the three of us (plus one teeny, sweetie girl) and we were joined by two more boys before the afternoon was over.  And as you can imagine, where there is water and boys, there is sure to be wetness and swimming.  The "only go out up to your knees" rule lasted 12 seconds with Finn - he sat down in the lake almost immediately.  I did think ahead and I had a change of clothes for him, but only because wearing big boy undies is still so new and with playing with friends, I wasn't sure he'd remember to tell me when he needed to go, so I wasn't too terribly concerned when he got soaked, I was just hopeful he didn't have an accident, too, or we would have been in a heap of trouble.  I just took off his shirt and let him have at the water; it's where he's happiest, and he had dry shorts and undies for the drive home.

The boys watched the ships for about 12 minutes, and then it was more fun to throw rocks and climb rocks and slide down rocks and lay on rocks and they were entertained for the rest of the afternoon by each other, the waves, the rocks, and occasionally the cannons that the ships shot off.

Next time the tall ships come through (in a couple of years, I'm sure), Finn will be a little older and I think it would be fun to actually go for a ride on one of the ships, or at least go down to Canal Park and look at them up close.  He was just a little too little this year and his attention span is still a little too short for us to brave the masses of people that converged upon Duluth.