Ice

Last Saturday was a bit cold and snowy. Karen had mentioned going up to Niles Michigan to their Ice Festival so we decided to give it a try. About the time we were getting ready to go, we got a call from Skyler wanting to come over, so we ended up making arrangements to take him with us. We got to Niles about 1:00 and thought we would get a quick lunch and then see the sites. It took quite a while to get a table and to get served, apparently the festival is successful in drawing large crowds.



Niles is a town of about 12,000 and they have this festival with ice carvings, and other outdoor activities right on the main street. Years ago there was an ice cream factory that made what was reported as a pretty good ice cream call Hunter ice cream.

There were about six ice sculptors who carved all pieces (perhaps 50 or so). There was quite a variety of subject matter ranging from mythical creatures to cartoon characters to natural and man made subjects.

Here is the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile

This is going to be a moose with full sized antlers, which the guy below is working on with a variety of tools. All of the ice for the even apparently comes in cardboard boxed like the one in the lower left hand corner of the picture above. The sculptors use a little water and just glue the blocks together until they get a piece big enough to make what ever they want. You can see the strait line in the neck shoulder areas where there are joints between blocks.

Here is an ice cream bar made of ice. Of course we had to sample the goods.

At the far end of the main street in a park near the St. Joe River there was a carousel with two horses, a loin and a tiger.

Below is a set of sculptures one of the Red Barron and the other of Snoopy of the Charlie Brown comics.

there were actually pretty detailed sculptures

Above is an ice ping pong table, and below a panther

Above a large fish and below a small Giraffe

Skyler and me with a turkey outside of a sporting goods store and below Karen next to a dress on a hanger out side of the dress shop

Here is a pretty detailed griffin. You can see the joints where the blocks of ice were put together.

Above is a small winged horse and below a pair of Pegasuses that are at the entrance to the whole show. We had parked on a side street and walked into the downtown at about the middle of the event and eventually got back to the starting place.

Below you can see Skyler's gloved hand pointing to the tip of the wing that had been broken off.

He found the broken wing tip and proceeded to kick in along the sidewalk for the rest of the afternoon.

The old house above is now the town hall. Still a pretty neat old building.

We decided to make one more quick lap at the end of the day to see a couple of the displays that we had missed on our first trip toward the river.

On a side street there was a restaurant with an open air patio that had a ice serving bar and ice stools.

The moose guy was still working on the moose, but had not yet put the antlers on and none of us wanted to wait that long.

We headed back to the car and had to tell Skyler that no he could not take the Pegasus wing tip home with him. This brick church was right across from the parking lot and with the trees in the foreground made an interesting picture. We had a good day and enjoyed being outdoors.

Early January Walk

Here we are in another year. We have gotten through the surgery on my shoulder, through Christmas and New Year's Eve, gone back to work and now it is time to get back to getting some exercise. So last Saturday January 8th. I suggested to Karen that we take a little walk. She countered with "it's cold and it's going to snow", and I said, "but look at that bight sun shine, I don't think the weather channel knows with it's talking about". So we bundled up (I won) and headed out on our typical route. Since there was snow cover on the ground the gravel road leading east from us was not muddy and so I suggested walking on it for a change of scenery. The corn field with the light snow cover set up an interesting patten as a foreground for this farm setting.

I have always enjoyed old fence rows. Old fence rows provide good cover for wild life. I have spent hours walking along fence rows hunting for rabbits and pheasant over the years. These days many of the old fences have been removed to accommodate modern farming techniques. Most of the fences were probably installed back in 50's or even earlier.

Karen caught on to the fact that I really hoped to walk all the way to the end of the road. That would make it about a 4 mile round trip. We discussed our options for a while and she finally realized that this was a good plan :-)

The last half mile out is into a wild life reserve where the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has allowed fields to be fallow and a low area was allowed to flood creating a nice little pond.

By this time Karen is really enjoying our walk, kind of.

It is a pretty walk and we both enjoy the patterns and textures that are visible this time of year.

These sunflower plants provide food for birds and now in mid winter are pretty bare, but set up a nice pattern.

Even something a common as a few stalks of grass in a bed of fresh snow is quite interesting.

Some trees hold their leaves throughout the winter and give a nice contract with the snow.

These red stem dogwood also provide an interesting pattern.

But then, without warning, a few snow flakes, how pretty.

" I told you it was going to snow and the wind is blowing right into our faces all the way home and you are in big trouble, because I'm cold!"

" It's still kind of pretty, and yeah it is snowing some."

Oh well, I guess I was wrong. I might as well get that admission out of the way right at the beginning of the year.