Super Ice Festival

This shoe is 10 FEET tall!

These trees are at the front entrance, they are huge. I spent the next hour trying to figure out how I can get a huge chuck of ice at our place so I can carve me a few. hmmm...

I have been looking forward to this day for months.

Fairbanks has an annual WORLD ICE CARVING COMPETITION! I love this kind of stuff. Jim talked to a guy from Idaho who comes every year just to volunteer for the month.

The competition is a whole month long with all sorts of activities and unveilings happening each day. For instance the ice maze

and ice slides were ready today, but there are a lot of kid slides and the ice skating rink that weren't quite ready. So it keeps you coming back...at $8.00 each time. I picked up a pair of figure skates today...THAT FIT, from freecycle. Awesome! I will be trying those babies out next week.

Lucky for me Jim was able to get us 2 "volunteer" badges. We came here with an entrepreneurial spirit and as soon as our insurance was final Jim took a trip to the festival to see if these guys would be interested in renting our lights. Seeing the lights in person is the best exposure for them so we crossed our fingers that they could use them.

There budget was already spent for the year, but they still wanted to use them and we wanted the publicity. They offered us a free logo...carved in ice (which is worth several thousand dollars) plus they signed our waver and threw in a few season passes. We were stoked.

Today was opening day and I couldn't wait, I have a feeling I will go everyday. Why not? You have to go while you can and before it all melts away.

We bundled up Charlie and headed out.

I still can't get over what a happy baby she is. She just LOVES being outside and absolutely thrives in the cold, it's fabulous!

We strolled around watching all the carvers go to town. I couldn't believe the arsenal of materials they were using...not to mention all the scaffolding.

There were huge chunks of ice all over the place, just waiting for their turn to be carved.

I wanted a before and after so I will be taking several pictures of this particular chunk of ice...leave a comment on what you think it will be. If you guess right, I might just send you a prize.

There is a river nearby and that is where they harvest the ice. They cut chunks and chunks out of it and move them around with fork lifts. It is the coolest thing I have ever seen.

They used our lights for the ice slides.

I used my sewing skills to make some sandbags as extra weight for the stands. We filled gallon bags with sand...

covered then in canvas...

and voila 25 pound sand bags. It was not the easiest thing trying to hold the bag in the left hand and sew with the right. Now that I'm thinking about it I probably could have used velcro on the top instead of sealing them on the bottom. Then I wouldn't have had to try to sew and weight lift at the same time. Plus if the bag ever gets punctured, it would be easy to replace. ARGH!

I have to make like 10 more for the other lights, so maybe I'll try that next time.

Here's a closer look...

The lights are pretty big so it makes my sand bags look small and lame, but they're not.

Now, who wants to come and visit me?????