Canal Park

I am writing this on my new laptop and still getting used to the way it feels and the way it works. Made the the switch from my old desktop so bear with me for a while.

I took this past week off as I had to use up vacation time or lose it. Not a bad position to be in so I took advantage of it. I decided to take the weekly (every Tuesday) bus to Duluth since I really hadn't been out of the county since mid December. I drove into town to meet it at 8 a.m. and gave the driver my fare for the 220 mile round trip.  I think the bus is designed for seniors, but anyone can take it, and it is subsidized which explains the $20 fare. It will drop you off in any number of locations as well as stopping to pick up other passengers anywhere along the route. I got off at the bus depot in Duluth and walked through the skywalk system to within a block of where I wanted to be.

Canal Park is an area that was a run down warehouse district adjacent to the entry to the harbor where the first saltie (ocean going vessel) just came in the other day. It made it from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Great Lakes and locks to end up in Duluth, a distance of over 2300 miles. 

Canal Park was developed back in the 80's starting with Grandma's restaurant and progressing into an area of shops, restaurants, breweries, distilleries, offices, museums, and hotels. It is now a destination for locals and tourists, of which I was one, coming to the head of the Great Lakes.

Here is some of what I saw.

The William A. Irvin was in service from 1938 to 1978 carrying coal ind iron ore. It is over 600 feet long and is now used as a floating museum. At Halloween (actually, most of October) it is turned into a haunted ship and is quite an attraction. Here it is still frozen into the ice, but it should thaw in the next couple of weeks. The harbor is open now and the icebreakers are no longer needed.

The Aerial Lift Bridge connects Canal Park to Park Point, an mostly residential area. It crosses the channel that these ships go through to enter the harbor and is a historical landmark. It was put in service in 1905 as an improvement to ferries, swinging foot bridge, and was first used as a gondola before turning into a lift bridge a couple of decades later.

This is the channel that goes from the lake to the bridge.

Here is the Bayfield, a tugboat that is grounded in front of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps operates the Duluth Maritime Museum at the west end of the bridge.

 Even though it was a chilly weekday people still walk on the paths and visit the displays along the end of the Lakewalk.

Long ago, in November of 1905, there was a shipwreck at the end of this breakwater, before they put a lighthouse there.

 The ship foundered and broke in half. Many lives were lost, but there were some survivors. It was only about a hundred yards off shore. Here is the story, but you'll need to embiggen the photo in order to read about it.

To be continued...