I'm finally getting around to posting from a trip we took in late January. We went up to the twin cities to visit the winter Skolstice. They put on a very cool ice maze at the Vikings training center - TCO Stadium
This makes the third year in a row that we have done a very interesting winter excursion. 2 years ago we went up to Duluth Minnesota and did a dog sledding adventure ride, and went tubing down one of the ski hills.
Last year we went up to Minneapolis and we did a monster truck show with an ice castle at night. Since we didn't make it to the ice maze or this is the first year they have done the ice maze we decided we should go do another winter excursion and check it out.
This was just outside of the maze, where you enter and have your tickets scanned. Also right inside they had a really nice concession booth that sold coffee, hot chocolate, cookies and pretzels and the sort.
The ice maze is filled with mostly clear blocks of ice that have been built up to over 6 ft tall so you can't see over the tops and cheat. It is really impressive to see each pieces they froze, moved and stacked. Not to mention how clear most of the blocks where. You could see unique freezing in each block.
Throughout the maze you have the opportunity to find little markers for all of Thor's friends at the end of the Dead ends. Well we didn't know when we started, apparently there is a activity for the kids to go around and find each one and then they can pick out a glow in the dark little toy. Luckily our boys are of the age where they have had plenty of that and it's not that cool so we could just go check out the little symbols and the guys and see if we like them.
While an ice maze is sort of cool like a corn maze is sort of cool, this goes a step above and beyond because of all the ice sculptures, which in my mind are the true draw of the event. They put carvings and sculptures on the outside of the ice maze as well as at many of the Dead ends injunction points of the ice maze. This allowed for a lot of really creative sculptors to show off their work. We happen to go to the ice maze at a time where it was daylight but close enough to dark or we could go through the maze a couple of times and see how the sculptures looked when they were lit up.
Honestly the daytime pics are terrible mostly because it's very hard to take a picture of clear ice sculptures with a backdrop of ice and not have any contrast. They got a little bit better when you waited for dark and dusk and had the lights take over, but I will say they looked 10 times better in person and we're quite impressive.
Batman
Superman
Pikachu
Olaf
I think there was a much better contrast at night and things were much cooler. The light really helped to show these off and help take better pictures. Not to mention they looked much different when the whole place was lit up, and the color was coming from all over through the clear ice. It was really impressive. I have a lot of photos at night, and think most of them look better this way. Get ready for a photo dump.
11
They had an ice wall with a couple of Milwaukee scroll bits that you could use to scroll in your initials or a message if you wanted to. This was really cool and had it lit up and all you had to do was find a spot on the ice and start carving. Free to do but very cool.
They also had a warming area that had probably 8 to 10 fire pits going with nice large warm fires. They also had a game of mini bean bag or cornhole toss made out of ice that was really cool. Someone also built a ice hockey table that you could use to play. The boys had a lot of fun with the ice hockey table but we made them get off so other kids could have a chance otherwise I think they could have spent an hour there.
I'm so happy that my wife it finds all of these things to do and interesting places to go. They're fun little weekend vacations that we get to go explore and do something out of the ordinary. This is just another one of those things that if it was left up to me I would have never known about and never gone to. These little travel trips in the weekends they're really fun and help to break up the winter monotony.
The warm weather really cut the whole thing short. Given its usually well below zero this time of the year, the warm weather, rain has caused all the snow and ice to melt. While I am happy to see the spring start to come, it has made things like this, ice fishing and snow shoeing/skiing a non starter. Hopefully in future years they are able to have it open longer.
