One gloomy day in Duluth, Minnesota: Canal Park, Enger Tower, ice cream, & BBQ!

For the last few days we've been road tripping down Minnesota's North Shore starting at the US-Canada border. We've seen waterfalls, beautiful cliffs, powerful waves, and gorgeous views, explored cute towns, learned history, and enjoyed some delicious food. For our final Minnesota adventure we've headed down to Duluth which is a port city on the shore of Lake Superior and today we're going to spend the day exploring and eating around the city. Good morning from Duluth! As you can see the weather is not as lovely as we had hoped it to be but we are still going to do our best to experience this city. And first up we're at Canal Park which is one of the most popular areas to explore in Duluth and being a port city Duluth has a lot of shipping history. Beginning in the 1800s the Port of Duluth-Superior made its mark as a mid-continent transportation hub. Among its earliest cargos were lumber, bulk grain, coal, iron ore, and walking cargo as immigrants, businessmen, and tourists arrive on passengers. In 1871 the Duluth Ship Canal opened and soon commercial shipping vessels transited the canal carrying goods to and from distant ports. Canal Park is home to the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center, the 1905 Corps of Engineers building, shops, restaurants, and aquarium, all kinds of other attractions, and Duluth's iconic aerial lift bridge from the early 1900s which raises when ships are coming into the harbor basin from Lake Superior. We hear it's a really fun experience to get to see them lift the bridge and watch a boat go underneath it and they have a schedule online that tells you the times that boats are coming through as well as what type of boat it is, what year it is, and some other information but unfortunately it doesn't look like any boats will be coming underneath the bridge while we're here today. We did just read though that this aerial lift bridge lifts an average of 4,500 times per year. One perfect thing Duluth has on a rainy day like today is the free Lake Superior Maritime Museum which shares the maritime history of the lake and the important role Duluth Harbor played in the early American steel industry as well as midwestern cargo transport across the globe. We just got done in the Maritime Museum and it is crazy that that thing is totally free because there is so much to see in there. One of the coolest things I thought was the history behind the aerial lift bridge. When it first opened there wasn't a roadway that was that took you across there was a gondola that basically hung from the truss or the support system from above you paid a nickel to go across so you could walk onto it you could drive onto it they would take horses supplies all kinds of stuff. I thought that was really neat. There were so many different ship engines to check out and models of different types of ships and also a lot of information about the Great Lakes and just the shipping industry throughout the Great Lakes over time and there were a few examples of different types of cabins on the ships and Adam even got to steer the ship that's probably not the correct term. So our lunch spot doesn't open till three today so I guess that's gonna be a linner for us so we're doing dessert first. We just came to an ice cream shop in Duluth called Love Creamery which we have been so excited to visit. This place has really unique flavors and we got one of our favorite things to get at an ice cream shop an ice cream flight and it's dripping so fast so I'll make this very very quick but we got salted caramel, maple walnut, goat cheese and branded brandied cherry, key lime pie, monster cookie and north shore crumble which is kind of like the pie we had yesterday in ice cream form. Oh that is the perfect level of saltiness probably the best salted caramel I've ever had it's sweet but salty but oh I was really excited about this one goat cheese and brandy oh my gosh it's melting so fast that is super creamy you can taste the nice pop of the tart cherries in there oh man this is dripping so much these are so creamy and so sweet again refreshing oh man right at the aftertaste you really taste the walnut so this is the key lime pie and a good chunk of their flavors are actually gluten-free including the key lime pie one which has chunks of pie crust in it oh wow that pie crust is perfect it was a huge chunk it just gives it such a good crunchy texture and then the key lime literally just tastes like key lime pie and ice cream form I thought since it's not as hot today that it wouldn't melt as fast but maybe it's the humidity or something but it's really melting real quick so we're sorry if we seem super frantic we're like racing to eat this before it melts all over the table race to eat it and and vlog it and tell you all about it but it's hard to do all at the same time and this one is the north shore crumble which has pieces of pie from a place called rustic inn which is really close to betty's pie that we went to yesterday and i've actually heard that it has better pie than betty's pie so now we can say we've tried them both oh it says a cardamom ice cream and I totally taste the spice in there and I got a little bit of a crunch I think of a berry time for you to try the last flavor before we drink this yeah monster cookie here we go I think it's a cookie blended up in there and it has m&m's in it that's really chocolatey I might like this monster cookie one the best it's very chocolatey and cookie there's lots of bits in there too I know we seem super panicked but this is truly delicious ice cream so so so creamy so high quality it's small batch ice cream their flavors are always changing they serve the fly twist in this cute like egg carton it's just a really cute place on the inside we might have to grab a pint this place is so good it's one of those places where we leave and we're like we need to get a pint of this so we can enjoy it later on too we know we're a bit of a broken record comparing minnesota to the pacific northwest but this is the last thing we'll say about it we promise but we're kind of getting seattle vibes from duluth more like what we envisioned seattle was like years ago before it became this huge tech city with all the tall buildings but they're both port cities so they're both on the water they both have some more industrial areas some of the buildings downtown kind of reminded us of pioneer square there are these beautiful hills behind duluth and same with seattle and with houses kind of just like nestled in them and the weather today is very very seattle like we've headed southwest of canal park to which is a park with trails a japanese garden and views of the city the park and tower are named after bert enger a furniture dealer who willed two thirds of his estate to the city of duluth for the development of a lookout tower and beautified grounds for tourists to enjoy in fun fact this tower has been visited by royalty two times the first time being in june 1939 when crown prince olav and princess martha of norway arrived in the park to formally dedicate inger tower in memory of bert enger and again in 2011 when king harold the fifth of norway and queen sonja came to celebrate restorative repairs it is starting to clear up but we have about 60 confidence that we'll see any views we were thankfully mostly wrong and you can see some views and we're not even to the top yet but every floor that you go up we thought it was getting clearer but we were just kidding the fog rolled right back in this park is really beautiful and in the park they have this japanese garden and there's this bell and the story behind it is really cool so during world war ii the japanese government instructed cities to melt down iron ore for ammunition and this buddhist temple in this town dismantled their bell tower but by the end of the war they hadn't melted down the bell and so the uss duluth visited this city after the war brought that bell to duluth and gave it to the city as a gift and then in the 1950s the bell was given back to that city and then i think he said in 1993 that japanese city gifted a replica of that bell to the city of duluth and it's this one here and you're allowed to ring the bell cover your ears cool our last stop in duluth we came to omc smokehouse which stands for oink moo and cluck we've been really excited about this place for a long time it's more of a sit-down restaurant style barbecue place and they start you off with their house-made chicharrones with a light dusting of their pork rub they also give you four of their sauces to try despite what this looks like this is not ketchup and mustard this is their honey barbecue sauce this is their bent paddle 14 degrees esb barbecue which is more of a mustard base this is a chipotle cilantro barbecue sauce and this is alabama white which has a little bit of a horseradish kick to it chicharrones are my go-to road trip snack these are really good too they taste really fresh they're really crunchy a little bit of a chew to them don't drop it they're so crunchy they're so good check out this spread we got a feast it's the only way to do it at a barbecue place all right first off we got a half rack of st louis style ribs upgraded one of our sides to the beef fat fries these are cheesy jalapeno grits threw in a little extra side of a pulled pork there this is a brisket plate and we asked for it from the fatty end of the brisket this is elotes and then this is a candied sweet potato bake all right we gotta start with the brisket because brisket is king oh man look how soft and tender that is that just pulls right apart i don't like comparing barbecue places to places in texas especially when they don't claim there are texas barbecue but this is done right this would hang down there this is super good the fat is nice and rendered the meat is so tender and just pulls right apart oh my goodness that looks beautiful oh my gosh it fell off the bone that is a perfect rib you can just see how easily that pulls apart but it does have a little bit of pull to it oh and the smoky flavor with uh with the smoke you can taste in there and then you can taste the little dry spice rub on here it's finally my turn to try something and like pry this away from adam and i'm trying the pulled pork i don't know if it has sauce on it or if it's just really juicy but it's very very juicy super tender amazing flavor and these bad boys are fried in beef fat super fluffy on the inside super juicy sweet corn a little bit of spice from the jalapeno the cilantro and then the sauce in there gives it a nice little tang and then there's little bits of i think it's cotija cheese that tastes like a dessert that is so sweet and then you have the brown sugar on top with the pecans and then i think that's powdered sugar the white there oh but the potato is so fluffy and it's like salty and sweet more sweet but a little bit of salt this is really good we have one item left this is probably the most food we've ever tried on camera at once but this is the cheesy jalapeno grits i've recently learned i like grits i didn't think i liked them but i do it's so cheesy has a little bit of a kick and that's the flavor of jalapeno the texture is really nice all right it's time for us to enjoy this without the camera it's gonna get ugly you don't want to see this coming from texas and having lots of good barbecue before we were really nervous this place wouldn't stack up to our high expectations but this place would hold its own in texas it was delicious we are full and happy every single item was so good and you guys look what's behind us oh my gosh what is that love creamery so there's actually a location of love creamery across from omc smokehouse we went to their canal park location so this is a different one but the one we went to didn't have pints for sale that we know of so we're gonna pop in and get a pint because we want more oops for later because we're really really full unfortunately that's the end of our time here in minnesota we know there are a ton of places we miss so we'll definitely be back we're unfortunately just kind of on a time crunch the rest of the year we have so many places we want to see so we just kind of keep moving train rolling but next up we're going to head to wisconsin for a few fun and cheesy adventures yeah that's what i was going for good time museum and it's pretty crazy that that it wasn't bird poop no it was the water falls off of here is that how you drive a ship i don't know jen elliott did we do it right there's a teaser for later yeah the oink wasn't the best