There was a neat sign with some history of the village and the Winter Carnival and the ice castle...we've had a good year for building an ice castles...lots of cold weather and not too much insulating snow on top of the frozen lake from which they carve the blocks of ice...this combination allowed the makers of the ice castle to cut really big blocks of ice to aid in their construction efforts this year...
This year's theme is "Pirate's of the Adirondacks", and in the picture above, Ben was helpfully pointing out one of the cannons carved out of ice in front of the main gate leading into the ice castle...
That's Ben seated on one of the thrones inside the main chamber of the ice castle...yup, it's really tall...
This little outbuilding overlooks the boat launch, and itself is made from a couple of hundred of the huge blocks of ice, and has a functional wooden door built into the wall...
Out on the front porch of the outbuilding, there are a couple of Adirondack chairs made of...wait for it...ice...
Around the back of the ice castle is a maze made of ice walls about 8 feet high...in some places you can see aquatic plants frozen into the ice, and while walking through the maze, Ben and I could see people through the blocks of ice...
In one part of the maze, there was a tunnel that Ben crawled through to get back to the main chamber of the ice castle...the tunnel was 20-30 feet long...
While we were checking out the ice castle, Ben and I heard some bagpipe music, and turned around to see the Winter Carnival King at the head of a procession...
A procession of people heading over to a cleared area on the lake, where the local curling club was getting ready to have a demonstration and tournament...
Ben and I hung out for a while watching the players hurl and sweep in this classically Scottish pastime...Ben has Scottish blood running through his veins, and thusly appreciates both sports and forms of combat that involve throwing heavy rocks...
After watching the curling for a bit, we wandered over to the prize of this year's ice collection...the ginormous pirate ship...
Not only was it cool to look at from the outside, but it was beautifully built, and had an open deign that allowed people to get inside and explore it...
This picture is of Ben inside the ship, up on the upper deck behind the steering wheel...
The great ice and superb planners have really outdone themselves this year...we'll be back tonight for the fireworks, and we can't wait...
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