Years ago, I'd guess at least 2012, but possibly even earlier, we did a news story about this thing called the Ice Castles. Someone, using hoses, sprinklers, and the cold of winter, was creating these fantastic icicle formations.
It was open to the public as an attraction, a fun winter activity for the whole family. When I saw that first news story, I became enchanted. I really wanted to go there. I looked up their website, found out when they were open, how much it would be, and we started planning our excursion. But it was relatively expensive for a family our size, and it was all the way up in a town in the mountains. We kept finding other things to do on weekends, and forgetting about the Ice Castles, and before we knew it, winter was over. The ice had melted, and they were closed for the season.
The next year, winter returned as it does, and I started planning again. But we pulled the same shenanigans, and before we knew it, Winter was over, and we hadn't gone. The next year, I was determined. I was going to go for sure, nothing was going to keep me away this time...except that the Ice Castles had moved away. When I went to their website this year, I was informed that the people who ran the ice castles had decided that there just wasn't enough cold weather in our mountains to maintain them for a long enough time for it to be worth it. They'd found a place in Colorado instead, approximately ten hours away.
Now I was completely out of luck, and also completely dejected. I'd missed my chance forever. They were gone.
So, imagine my excitement a few years later when I learned that the Ice Castles were returning. Apparently they'd done well enough in Colorado that they were expanding. They had a location somewhere in the New England area now...I want to say Maine, but checking their website makes me think it was New Hampshire. Apparently, with more franchises, they don't have to be open as long, so they returned to us and reopened their third/first location.
Now that they were back, we resumed our past relationship with them. Meaning each year, at the start of the winter, we swore that we wouldn't miss them this time. Then, as the winter wore on, and Christmas ate up all our funds, and time was hard to come by, and it kept slipping our mind, we never went.
It happened again and again, until this year. I don't know what changed, maybe just the right opportunity coming up right after a payday or something, but we still had enough money for it, and we were all going to be available to attend, and we actually remembered that it was open and we wanted to go.
So, Finally, the Thursday before New Year's, we all got in the car, and drove up the Canyon to see the Ice Castles.
It was really amazing, all that I'd imagined all these years.
The ice sculptures (I guess sculptures is the best word for them, although no one used a hammer and chisel on them or anything) were at least fifteen feet tall. There was a big ring of them going all the way around the place, so we were in a sort of ice fort.
And there were no prohibitions on touching.
You could touch the icicles all you wanted.
I quickly had to admonish Little, to keep him from breaking them off, though.
I guess it's my Boy Scout "Leave No Trace" training that makes me get on my kids' cases for stuff like this, but I want everything we see to be there for others to experience as well. Of course there's worse things that you could do than touching or even breaking the ice. I had to keep yelling at him for licking the ice too.
They had an ice throne, and a slide you could crash your way down if you were willing to wait in line for a while.
In hindsight, waiting for the slide may not have been the best idea, or at least waiting for it when we did might have been dumb. We probably should have saved it for the last thing that we did before leaving. Instead, we stood in line for what felt like a half an hour for a three second slide down some ice sheets.
The ride was neat, if a little rough on the landing. I hit so hard that my butt hurt for the rest of the night. The problem with waiting in line for the slide was that we stopped moving. It's not so bad being out in the cold as long as you are dressed for it, and you keep moving and exercising your body so it produces heat. Standing in line blew that for us completely. I'd admonished the kids repeatedly to wear the warmest possible clothes, but it wasn't long after the slide that my daughter had had enough of the cold.
She said her feet were so cold they were painful and burning. We tried to hold off the end for a few minutes longer by swinging by the snack booth and getting some hot chocolate for everybody.
With night fallen, we got he chance to see the place in the dark, which is pretty special.
All the ice sculptures have LED lights inside of them, so it gets even more pretty.
But our time was up. It wasn't just the one daughter complaining anymore. It was time to get back to the car, and start up the heater. So, we headed out.
It sure was worth the trip, though.
