Plymouth Ice Festival

After church today we headed over to Plymouth for their annual ice carving festival. I didn't realize how long it has been going until I heard on the radio today that people who went when they were kids are now taking their grandkids to it!

This year the weather was nice--cold enough that the ice wasn't melting, but not so cold that you couldn't stand it. (Last year it rained, and the year before it was so cold you could hardly stand to be outside.)

It was crowded as usual, but not as bad as it could have been. We've had some light snow in the last day, so some of the sculptures are a bit hard to see. I just wanted to go over and dust the snow off each one, but I knew that Mark would kill me if I went behind the yellow tape :)

A dragonfly. You can also see some of the other sculptures in the background.

A guy and a fish.

There are different competitions you can enter--individual or group, high school or college. It is interesting to see the different skill levels, and even more interesting to see them working on the sculptures right there!

There is at least one team from Japan that comes every year and does a HUGE sculpture. One year it was a massive pirate ship!

We've never seen them with flowers inside of the sculptures before, but there were a lot of them this year--including one that was heart shaped and read "Will you marry me?"

A team from UofM working on a palm tree. They were using some sort of spray to "glue" on one of the branches.

A reindeer.

They also had snowshoes that you could try out.

Steven's excitement at being at his first ever ice festival!