Slide a Mile

The Ice Park closed for the year Sunday evening. We have had temperatures above freezing almost every day for a while, and yesterday hit 44 degrees. Every night the the thermometer drops back down to between zero and 10 degrees, but all the attractions at the Ice Park are slowly melting and are just memories kept alive with photographs. One of the big attractions at the Ice Park is always the slides. The last couple of years have featured the Slide-a-Mile event, which each of the slides at the park assigned a distance from 5 feet to 117 feet. Kids keep track of how many feet they have accumulated on the slides, and when they reach a mile they get a certificate. There are also prizes for the top sliders.

Whenever I have visited the Ice Park there are always people on the slides. A variety of sleds and sliding devices are generally used, including that old standby cardboard.

It really comes alive at night when the lights embedded in the ice are turned on.

It is very colorful and the air is filled with the sound of kids of all ages having fun.

Standing at the top of the slides looking down you have a choice of which chute you will take.

I love the pattern of colors.

Can you ask for any more magical place to go sliding?

Blackberry Invasion

Here's another old barn that I saw in the Skagit Valley in Washington while we were visiting there in January. It is being gradually devoured by the blackberry vines growing around it. They are growing on the right side, greedily creeping around the boards.

On the left side they are making their way up onto the roof and working their way under the boards in the front.

It is a handsome old barn, but without human intervention I don't think it will be able to fight off the attack by the blackberries. One thing you can be sure of in the Pacific Northwest is that blackberry vines left unchecked will overpower everything around them.

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Click on the barn below to see more old barns at Barn Charm hosted by Tricia.

A Day at the Ice Park with Sydney

Marty and I spent a fun afternoon a couple of weeks ago at the Ice Park with our granddaughter Sydney, who is almost two. It was a beautiful warm sunny day.The Kids Park has a lot of great slides designed for kids of all ages. Marty helped Sydney on the slides, and I was behind the camera. We had Sydney wear her bike helmet just as a precaution. That ice can be very hard if you fall, and Sydney goes at everything full tilt and with no fear. One of my favorite slides is the hippo slide, and Sydney enjoyed sitting on the hippo and feeling his smooth icy ears. Click on the collages to enlarge them to see the details better.

Another slide I particularly like is this fish. It's perfect for the younger crowd. Sydney is posing in front with a couple of treasures she found on the ground. Well, to you and me maybe little twigs and pieces of ice aren't treasures, but to a little girl they are.

Marty went down the bigger slides with Sydney. To go down the big luge-like slides they used our plastic toboggan. Sydney liked all the slides!

I think one of her favorite activities was going through the ice tunnel. Grandpa went in with her to help her along. It was a little hard to crawl on the slippery ice and she needed a push or two to get through. There was a big smile on her face every time she went through, and I believe she would have went through many more times, but Grandpa's knees would not have held out for many more trips through.

There were several sculptures that required investigation, from the twirlees to the ice chair and snow machine, not to mention the ice rabbit that needed petting.

We also took a walk by the Multi Block sculptures.

Then it was time to go home. Sydney reluctantly rode in the toboggan as we left. Throughout our time in the park she spent very little time riding.

This is Sydney's second year to go to the Ice Park. Last year her cousins were visiting and we had a fun time playing at the Kids Park with them. You can see the fun they had in the post I did last year by clicking HERE. You can click HERE to see more posts on the Ice Park from this year and past years, or just click on Ice Park in my Labels section in the sidebar.

Redpoll Action

One of the birds that hang around Fairbanks all winter is the Common Redpoll. They come to the feeders in large flocks. The group that has been visiting my feeders seems to be somewhere around 3 to 4 dozen. It is very hard to get an accurate count because they flit around so quickly. I took these shots a few weeks ago in the late morning. For a sociable little bird there are many territorial spats while they are feeding.

Their most striking feature is the bright red cap on the top of their heads. When the sun hits their red cap it seems to sparkle.

They provide quite a bit of entertainment as they go about stuffing their beaks. They don't stash food so they have to consume enough to see them through the night.

I've spent a lot of time sitting by my kitchen window watching them as they zip around.

We've had temperatures in the low 30s and bright sunshine during the day for the last week so we've had a little melting, but still lots to go. And, yes, that's shirtsleeve weather! When I went to the store today I saw a couple of people in shorts and I didn't wear my coat, although I did have it in the car. Even the birds have unfluffed their feathers!

More Single Block Ice Carvings

Tonight I'm jumping back to the Single Block competition in the World Ice Art Championships. First are some nighttime shots of the Realistic division top three, starting with "It's Mine" in first place. "The Mask" was the second place winner.

"The Shaman" was third place. You can see the daytime shots for these three by clicking HERE.

The first place winner in the Abstract division was "Sail of Love" and it also won Artists Choice. It was carved by Vitaliy Lednev and Sergey Loginov of Russia. Both of them have competed here for many years and won numerous awards. Sadly I only have a daytime shot as it collapsed before I got back for a nighttime shot.

The second place in the Abstract was "Time & Light Tunnels" carved by Tian Zuo Wei and Hai Li of China. Both of them are experienced carvers who have won many awards.

There are 50 entries in the Single Block competition. I've done a couple of collages to give you a glimpse of some of the others.

There is a great deal of beauty to be seen, but soon it will be only visible in photos. We've had several days of daytime temps above freezing, and the prediction is for more of the same. The nighttime temps have been around zero and a bit above, so it will take a while for the sculptures to melt away. The Ice Park is scheduled to close on the 27th. If we are still having colder temperatures they will sometimes keep it open for a while longer, but I have a feeling that this year it will close on schedule. Remember you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

You can see more at IceAlaska.com.

Barn With a View

We saw this old barn in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, in October of 2009. You get a great view of the hills behind the barn looking through the barn, and a glimpse of the Bitterroot Mountains in the background.
It had been in this condition for quite a while at the time we were there, but I wonder if it withstood the heavy snows that Montana got this winter.

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Click on the barn below to go to Tricia's Barn Charm and see more old barns.

Ice Turtles

Around the Ice Park there are many ice carvings, but not all of them are part of the competitions. There is a maze, slides, benches, walls, an ice rink, and a great many small sculptures. Some kids can climb on, like these turtles. They are small sculptures, but really quite large for turtles as they are 3 to 4 feet long. They are shuffling along as all turtles do, but not many turtles shuffle along through the snow.

And like all turtles, they don't get anywhere fast.

At nighttime they look quite fearsome.

In the background is the ice maze, and it almost appears as if they are fleeing from it.

Amongst all the more dramatic sculptures you can see around the Park, these sweet turtles are a delight to encounter. I was quite enchanted with them.

Ice Sculpture: Let It Be

We finally come to the first place winner in the Realistic division of the Multi Block competition in the World Ice Art Championships. This entry also won the Artists Choice award. The title is "Let It Be" and it was carved by four Japanese artists. Junichi Nakamura was one of the artists that won first place in the Single Block for "It's Mine." Click HERE to go to the post showing that sculpture. The other carvers are Shinichi Sawamura, Yoshinori Mabuchi, and Koji Murakami. The construction is really quite amazing and shows great skill.

Again, some of the greatest beauty is in the details.

I do like doing bird photography!

Even the tail feathers are done beautifully.

Again, for a size comparison, Marty and my granddaughter Sydney are walking in front of the sculpture, which I would estimate is about 20 feet tall.

The sun goes down at the Ice Park and as I've said before it becomes magical.

I can never decide if I like the daytime or the nighttime views best.

The two photos above were handheld and taken on auto on my Canon Rebel XT with my zoom lens. Another night I drug my tripod to the park and did a bit of experimenting with exposure time and got a little different result. The hardest part of the whole operation that night was I couldn't see what I was doing, so I had to stick with the settings I had set up at home. When I looked at the little viewfinder I was sure I had set everything up wrong. Add to that little equation temps around the zero mark. I think that the next time I want to do any experimenting with nighttime photography I will pick a warmer night!

That same night I also took photos with my little Canon Powershot Elph and the effect is again different.

Remember you can go to IceAlaska.com for more photos and information on the sculptures. I still have lots more photos from the Ice Park to show you, but the sculptures may not last too much longer. There have been a few collapses already, but I think they were probably more from design flaws and not weather related. Next Friday they are forecasting temps above freezing, and when it gets to the point where sculptures are in danger of falling down they will close the park. However, the beauty of these lovely works of art will live on in the photos taken by many people. On a side note, I don't know how the earthquake in Japan affected these gentlemen. Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Mubuchi are listed as living in Hokkaido, which is the northernmost island in Japan. Mr. Murakami works in Tokyo and Mr. Sawamura is listed as living in California. We can only pray that they and their families are all safe.