Ice Castle Field Trip

I had heard someone talking about this ice castle in Midway, so while Sam was home between Christmas and New Year's, we took a field trip up there to see it. It went right along with our earlier discussion of ice storms, after all! :)

We really, really loved it. I think we went at the perfect time of day (we arrived just before 4 pm) because it wasn't very crowded, the sun was out long enough to reflect off the ice in really beautiful ways, and the light was constantly changing. The ice formations reminded me so much of Carlsbad Caverns---doesn't the picture above look just like this?

First of all, a cute baby. We must establish that, first of all.

Now, the eerie, otherworldly, lit-from-within ice. So delicate! So pale! (This does not actually have lights under it. Although at night, some of it does.)

It's pretty amazing to see the size of this thing. You can read about how they made it on their website. It evolves throughout the winter as temperatures change.

I loved these knobby bits, with a light dust of snow on top. 

Here they are closer-up.

Did you remember a cute baby?

I love the different colors the ice changes as the sun passes through it!

Blue shadows underneath. These look like a bunch of canopy beds with curtains hanging down. Or mushrooms.

Looking up at some jagged icicles. This is so abstract, I love it. You could be looking any direction. Or at one ice crystal, microscopic.

A Junie ice-cube.

More knobs. Vertical this time.

A Ky ice-cube!

More scary jagged-ness

Love these tiny, scale-like shapes

Peeking out of an ice canyon

Sunset catches the edges of the ice

Layers of blue

Long, snaky ice-wall

We stopped by our old friend the Heber Valley Creamery afterwards, and when we were done, it was dark, so I had Sam take me back and drop me off so I could take another run through the castle and see it in the night time. They have lights beneath the ice in several places, making it glow different colors, and it looks really cool. I stand by my assertion that seeing it in the daylight is even more spectacular, though. Still, these pictures are striking:

We loved this! Go see it yourself! (On a Monday afternoon, when it's cheaper and less crowded.)

Romanesque Architecture---making castles

To learn about Romanesque architecture, we talked about several Romanesque/Norman-style castles and monasteries. We loved David Macaulay's book Castle to go along with this discussion. Then, of course, we wanted to make our own Romanesque castle! Important features of the era include small windows, large thick masonry walls, and defensive fortifications.

You can find lots of cardboard castle tutorials online, but all you really need are a bunch of boxes and containers and paper towel rolls and tape. We covered our castle in butcher paper so we could draw on it.

We didn't do the motte-and-bailey-style castle (where the city is downhill from the keep) but you could easily do that, with a couple more boxes to make the hill and the walled city. We made a central courtyard in ours. A lovely, Edenic place.

While we were building our castle, Daisy made her own castle all by herself. I love the flag on top. :)

The keep, with arrow loops on the upper story

We used an old cake box for our main outer wall, so it made sense to repurpose the clear top into a moat for the outside of the castle (with alligator, of course)

This bunny is entering the castle, across the moat

The drawbridge goes up and down with strings, but the portcullis just lifts up like a flap (we couldn't figure out how to make it slide up and down easily)

These soldiers are shooting flaming arrows from their positions between crenellations