Ice Castles

I saw this advertised a month ago and thought it sounded like something

we needed to see and experience.  It's called "Whyte on Ice" festival. 

Unfortunately. . . it was during the week the the temperatures dropped to

-25.  The only week it's dropped that low all winter.  It was soooo cold.

We drove to Whyte Ave, found the park, got out of the car long enough to

take these pictures through the fence and by that time we got back to the

car, we were frozen.

This was the first area, the ice sculptures were pretty good,

apparently, they bring teams in from all over the world.

This one is a castle with a slide that the kids can actually go down.

But who would want to slide down it, your bottom would freeze to it.

This one is actually really cool, no pun intended.

This is a table and barrel chairs.

A goose, a Canadian goose.

This is a church, not "our" church but a church just the same.

I don't know what's underneath the ice, but this man was working on

it with a chainsaw.  It was so cold, you can't imagine how cold.

Then in another part of the park, we found these.

Now these are amazing!

I'm not sure what this is, but it's neat.

Awesome lion, how do they do the mane.

Elks head, just the head.

Look at the detail on the wings.

Praying mantis, kind of creepy.