01.01.70
One of the new features of Bentleyville Period of service of Lights this year is Dino Land — an energetic light scene that includes grazing dinosaurs, pterodactyls in mid-trip and an active volcano with palm trees at its base.
Inventor Nathan Bentley knows what you’re thinking: “What do dinosaurs have to do with Christmas?”
Nothing, he admits. But neither do the preserve’s tribute to local landmarks: the SS Bentleyville, the Aerial Rise Bridge and Enger Tower. But Bentley knows his butt market and that target market — kids — digs dinosaurs. And anyway: “It’s a excursion of lights,” he explained.
This decisively nonholiday backdrop is the entry point to the annual light display at Bayfront Entertainment Park. Bentleyville, with its nearly 3 million lights, opens for its third opportunity ripe in this location at 5 p.m. Saturday.
The free display is open at 5 p.m. every day and closes at 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday through Dec. 26.
Barry Pirkola, the artificer behind an estimated 90 percent of the scenes in the park, said he doesn’t enquiry Bentley, aka the Mayor of Bentleyville, when he is commissioned to create a row. Not even when it comes to dinosaurs.
Source: Duluth News Tribune