Saturday, February 7, 2009

Not exactly warm and cozy ...


I've never been so excited to be so cold in my entire life. My sneakers were quickly soaked through, I don't wear hats and I left my gloves in the car. To go play in a castle made entirely of ice. Perhaps not the best planning I've ever done, but ohmygod it was fun!

The other weekend, I went with a few friends to Saranac Lake to watch them build the ice castle, which is a tradition for that tiny, quaint town going back decades. It's also a tradition that it is built by convicts. I'm not sure that the convicts were working on it this year, or at least when we were there, as there were children running around, helping out and not a chain, warden, or big police van anywhere in sight.

It wasn't so much an ice castle as it was an ice complex. Sure, there was the massively large castle, but there was also an ice pirate ship and a smaller ice castle that was adorable, but that you couldn't actually walk into - there wasn't a door. Although it was big enough to go into, had they remembered to leave a door. Oh well. I guess we can't expect them to be engineers. Although the big castle had an arched doorway, which was impressive.

The ice blocks were incredible. They were huge - at least four feet long and probably two feet thick. Carved right out of the lake, floated down to where the castle was, and picked up and hauled around with backhoes. So much fun to watch. The guys were plastering the blocks together with a mixture of snow and water. They were definitely not going anywhere. Nor was the fish that was frozen in one of the blocks. At least, it looked like a fish. May have been a big leaf or some trash though. Can't say for sure - it was pretty high up.

Apparently, they light it up at night and do fireworks around it at the beginning and end of the Winter Carnival. Since it was still being built when we went, we didn't see that part. But watching them build it was cool enough. Those guys work fast! Of course, I guess when it's approximately 2 degrees out and you're sitting on an ice wall, the motivation is there to get your butt in gear before it freezes right off.

And then, in the summer. they just let the whole thing melt down.

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