Midway Ice Castles

Perhaps you remember THIS post?
Bernie and I were just driving through an area called Midway when we stumbled upon an amazing scene of which we had never imagined nor dreamed was possible.

We stopped by the "Ice Castle" area again during our anniversary weekend, when there really wasn't much to see.
Now...now there was something to see, and this time we got to see it all lit up at night.

The "castles" are created using plain water, PVC pipes, harvested icycles, and freezing temperatures.
And a bit of ingenuity of course.

I will just let you enjoy seeing the ice castles as photographed at night without much further comment
If you would prefer to see the pictures enlarged in a slide show format, click HERE.
Sometimes I used flash so you can see the ice details, other times I used only the lighting from the castles so you can enjoy seeing them as they looked in the dark.
The blue is the natural color of frozen water; anyone who has visited a glacier will recognize that unique shade of blue.

(Six foot three inch tall Bernie walking through one of the castle.  The castles will continue to "grow" right up through March; December was a bit on the warm side so they have not grown as fast as they did last year.)

Reminds me a bit of jelly fish floating through the water.

In the above picture you can see some of the PVC and structural design using the icicles to form the castles. The PVC delivers the water spray to encase the icicles and grow them.

The water spray also builds other interesting structures around the base.

How many pictures were taken just while we were there?
Everything from cell phone cameras to gigantic telephoto set-ups on tripods were being employed.

I really liked seeing the families strolling around together.
What a perfect family outing!

One of the naturally formed designs that would be incredible re-created by someone in glass.

Here's Brent, the maestro of ice.
I met him last year and had a nice chat with him.
Later I left a comment on his website, telling him I had blogged about my visit.

This is his wife Linda, and the youngest of their children.
I had not met her before, but when we first walked into the area, she was putting pictures of guests up on a wall.
I started to tell her how much I enjoyed seeing the castles last year and how I had posted pictures about my visit and so many people had loved seeing how beautiful the structures were.
She suddenly said "You are the hat lady!  Millinery, right?  Oh let me call Brent, he would love to see you again!"
How about that for hospitality?
We chatted together for quite awhile as people kept coming in to see the grounds.  Brent has patented his process and has trained a few people on how he creates his castles.  I could see how much both of them love doing this, and how excited they are about expanding the castles.

I hope we can get back up to Midway to see the castle "fully grown", and take some daylight pictures too. 
Oh, and there is to be a Valentine's dance there too...can you imagine?
The only thing better than that would be a wedding.
Wow. 
And double wow!

(if you didn't before, you might want to go back to the top of this post and visit the post from last year's castles. I am still amazed at how beautiful they were!)