Sunday, February 22, 2015

Ice castle


Three days. Three DAYS! That's all they could keep the ice castle frozen for this year.  Every year in Midway they build this ice sculpture big enough to walk through. I don't know how they do it, probably takes layers of  freezing and adding more water, and freezing again. You may have seen the ice castle in this video by the Piano Guys? Their photography/videography is much better than mine. 

 We made a reservation weeks ago with our friends Brenda and Monte that included a sleigh ride, then the Monday after it opened, we got an email saying if we wanted to see it at all we needed to get up there that night. They were closing early.  Winter this year, in spite of my last post, has been almost non-existant. We had one big set of storms right in time for my out of town family's visit, then one other doinky one. That's it. We ate out on the patio for dinner the Sunday before Valentine's day. I'm running in T-shirts lately.  Anyway...


 The horses were beautiful. Same company that we took for our Haunted Halloween wagon ride took us this night. 



 It was pretty magical.


 Brilliant me, I didn't notice until halfway through the ride that this really really was a sleigh. There were no wheels, just runners. I felt like Laura Ingalls. 

 We walked into the Ice castle through this beautiful arch


 and into a kind of courtyard area where we met Elsa and Anna (of course --who do you think built the castle duh?).

 Then you could wend your way through hallways and into rooms lit up with lights that changed colors.

 Fountains, and even fire (it will show better in the video at the end).







It was crowded, but still really neat. Brenda and Monte are always a good time. They drove, and they even let us stop at Kneaders afterwards for Mexican Hot chocolate. We've got to do something again with them soon. Our weekends fill up with stupid chores, and then we are too exhausted to do fun stuff. Does that happen to anyone else?