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| - Let me start with a very important fact. This is a canal. This is not a waterfront and this is not the ocean, so people have to take it for what it is -- a canal.
Phew, I feel so much better. And, now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can say that for being a canal...this is one pretty dam good canal and for a variety of reasons.
When the 115 weather isn't killing me slowly and it's in the double digits, I love to go running and the canal is the perfect option for outdoor running. It's a running path I forget about all too often, but when I remember, I love it because it just keeps going and going and going. I'll see everyone from families with strollers to retirees with dogs along the trail and everyone is friendly and welcoming. Whether you want to go one mile or 10, you've got plenty of track to cover.
I wish the canal offered more water-side businesses but Old Town has tried and I give them credit for trying. Even if it's just a canal, there's always something nice about eating along some sort of water as long they keep the water clean aka stench-free. So, if you travel along the canal, you'll find some good stops randomly placed along the way,
And I will leave this review with my only unique story pertaining to the canal. While running my dog one morning, I ran past the Old Town canal crossing and saw some men standing in the drained canal. Suddenly I saw these Jurassic fish flopping in and out of the water. These things were huge...probably five feet long and five feet wide, I thought that they had somehow found their way into the canal and the men must of course be saving the poor really ugly creatures-from-another-world...so I asked. And guess what? These were not canal trespassing fish. Instead, they were placed in the canal to apparently keep it "clean" (take that with a grain of salt) and the guys were doing their annual canal cleaning so they had to keep the fish from swimming away. So the next time you gaze into the "ocean of Phoenix," think of the poor freakish fish swimming down below.
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