Minnesota: A day in Duluth

My sisters and I, our 7 children and our parents spent a day in Duluth, about an hour south of my parents (they live about halfway between Duluth and the Canadian border in northern Minnesota). We had a fun picnic in Canal Park at a fun park-
and then spent the afternoon at The Duluth Depot, which has a fun Children's Museum, and the Lake Superior Railroad Museum. The Children's Museum has a "body shop" section:
And a fun Medieval castle section-
and also a fun camping section; here is my mom reading a book to some of the kids in a tent-

The Lake Superior Railroad Museum has a fantastic collection of locomotives and other train equipment, some of which you could go on. The kids LOVED climbing around all the different trains; I could hardly keep up with them! The lighting there made it difficult to get good pictures.
When we were there, my dad told us a cool story about when he was young and went with his parents to bring his Grandma and Grandpa Downing to the Duluth Depot in 1955 (my dad would have been 6), so they could catch a train to the coast, where they boarded a boat to travel to England to visit family; my dad's paternal family are all English. It was really cool to wander around the train museum and picture my great-grandparents actually catching a train there to travel abroad. Thanks for the memory dad!

We ended the day by driving across the aerial lift bridge in Canal Park, through which huge ore ships pass
and we went out on Park Point on Lake Superior and played on the beach. Most of the Lake Superior coastline is very rocky, so a sandy beach on the lake is a rarity. The water is ice cold, but we ventured to get our feet wet.