Exploring Canal Park

I took my first to the Canal Park area on Sunday, January 26. The weather was fairly nice outside for January with a 30-degree temperature and light wind. A perk of visiting Canal Park during the winter is the free parking. I first visited Vitta Pizza with my roommate where I ordered a Margarita Pizza and Garlic Breadsticks. This was definitely a delicious meal, but the tab wasn't cheap.

After lunch, we went into Duluth Pack, the Lake Superior Marine Museum and another smaller gift shop, just to look around. If you haven’t been into Duluth Pack, the sweatshirts are one of the most comfortable things you’ll ever find. A downfall about Canal Park during the wintertime is that these stores cut their hours, so they are really only open during the daytime (closing around 5 or 6).

We then made our way across the Minnesota Slip Bridge (Blue Bridge) over to the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center (DECC) and Bayfront Festival Park. We ended up walking around the DECC and watched curling from the Skywalk, as there wasn’t much else going on. I learned that the thing you push is called a rock and that the ice is pebbled, which is less slippery than ice hockey.

Just on the outskirts of Bayfront Festival Park, lies a circle sheet of ice, where I spotted about five people skating. The one thing that intrigues me about Duluth ice rinks is that children are required to wear helmets when skating. It’s a unique thing to the Twin Ports compared to the Cities.

Before I went down again, I asked Communications Director for UMD Athletics, Bob Nygaard (otherwise known as my boss) for some background on youth hockey in Duluth. His son plays for a Duluth East team. He mentioned that youth hockey goes on at Amsoil all the time when UMD isn’t playing. He said that most practices take place during the week with games on the weekend, as he believes that there is a shortage of indoor ice in Duluth.

I then took my second visit to the area on Monday night. When I got down there, we saw cars in the Amsoil parking lot and looked at the whiteboard of the events going on. The match-up for 5:15 slot: Hermantown vs. Portman. Portman is located in the Lester Park-Lakeside neighborhood of Duluth — they wore uniforms that resembled the Boston Bruins and Hermantown served as the home team — boasting their home whites.

After watching some of the game, I talked to a parent of a player. “My son plays for Squirts for Hermantown,” Jim Sonneson said. “It’s pretty neat to play here as my son and most of his friends are Bulldog fans. We were just here this weekend for North Dakota and now we’re back.” Although I didn’t stay until the final horn, Portman was leading Hermantown 3–1 in the third.

Overall, I think my exploring around Canal Park went pretty well, but if there was one thing I could have changed, I wish I would have gone on Friday or Saturday when more people would be out and about.