Almost on a whim, my better 3/4ths and I took a trip up to the North Shore of Lake Superior this weekend and brought the durables along. We had talked about going up there before but had never gotten around to it. But this past weekend, we said WTF, let's go. Besides, my better 3/4ths has come out on top in interviews for the director of pharmacy where she works, so I thought it would be a nice treat for her.
On Saturday we rode the North Shore Scenic Railroad. It's name is a bit of a misnomer because even though it does travel up the North Shore and the trip lasts for 1.5 hours, it never leaves Duluth and we spent a lot of time getting on and off the main track. But it did have beer for sale, so that was indeed a plus. Besides, I learned my taste for alcolhol had returned after I developed a brief distaste following a tour of the wine country the weekend before in California (tasting every possible wine at 8 different wineries during a hot afternoon will do that for a guy). We also visited the railroad museum in Duluth.
We stayed at Two Harbors in an Americinn and had the scenic view from our hotel room. Of course this view is relative because on one side of the inn there is a gas station and on the other side there is the town cemetery. We were on the gas station side.
Yesterday we visited Split Rocks Lighthouse and Tettegouche State Park. The durables both said that they liked the train ride the best but they kept wanting to go up to the light at the lighthouse. But I think they enjoyed throwing rocks into the lake more than anything else, because it was easy to get them away from the lighthouse and the trains, but we essentially had to drag them from the waterfronts we stopped at. I took this as some sort of toddler revealed preference.