Ice Festival (Feb 18th Weekend)

I am a little late posting this blog, but I needed to get the photos together and I just didn't have time until now. LAST weekend David and I went to New Hampshire and while we were there we visited the Keene Ice Festival. 

The first time we went in 2009, we went in the afternoon.  It was pretty small and a lot of the ice sculpture were finished and starting to melt.  So, this year we went really early in the morning and I decided it was too early. The sculptures weren't really up and the crowds were thin.  Maybe I need to realize it's just not that great a festival.  But walking around downtown Keene is always fun.  And with this particularly warm winter we are having, it's all the better for strolling.  

Here are a few photos I took downtown:

They had a fire engine for the kids to explore:

There is a new addition to the downtown Keene shopping experience:  Your Kitchen Store.  (Hummm....David, here's the catalog link.) It is part Bed Bath & Beyond and part The Pan Handle in Granbury.  It's so GREAT!  I wanted to walk out with carts and carts of new things.  Nancy and George bought me some baking sheets with  cooling racks for my birthday.  I have been wanting some racks for a long time.  It's the Mary in me, I suppose. I LOVED the dishes! The utensils and place settings.  So many designs. So many colors.  So many cute things for the kitchen.  It's my new favorite store and DEFINITELY my favorite New England store.

We had lunch in town. Back to the house for the afternoon.  I took photos around the house (They are posted on the Photo-A-Day page. ) Nancy made a lovely dinner and we all turned in relatively early.

Sunday was church and lunch. Before we left, we went for a walk with The Brockmans to a place where the heron nest.  They weren't there in February, obvioulsy, but we  did see two nests high up in the trees.  (I don't have a good zoom lens yet, so I didn't get a photo.) 

It has been a warmer winter and where there would have been inches of crunchy snow, there was ice.  This made the hiking (especially downhill) a little tricky.  David and George decided to opt out half way through.  Not worth falling down! Nancy, Lee, Bob and I kept going.  We made our way down the trail and through the woods, hanging onto bush branches, navigating our way. "This way is less slippery" ... "No ice over here" .... I just listened for the advice and followed accordingly. I had on Mary's red hiking boots, so I had pretty good traction.  There were a few wipeouts, but we all four made it to the water's edge.

Lee took off and Bob followed.  Nancy and I stayed back, exploring closer to the trail. I heard Lee call out and went toward her. I had risked near death, or at least a prained ankle, trapsing through the iced trail and I wanted  to see the nests! Nancy decided to go back and check on David and George.  I headed down to a clearing where there was not only nests, but a beaver lodge. 

I stood there looking around, taking it all in. I wished they were out working and we could have seen them in action.  Lee explained how shy they were and how that would never happen.  Alas.  As I stood there all I could think about for some reason was the Chronicles of Narnia. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver feeding the children in their underground lodge after learning the fate of Mr. Tumnus. It made me smile. 

"Can we get closer?" I asked.  "Sure," Bob said. The water is frozen solid, but it's not very deep anyway.  You'll just get wet if it breaks."   

I wanted to clarify, "So, worse case scenrio, I get wet?  I won't drown?"

"You won't drown."

So while walking over a frozen pond to see a beaver lodge close up and falling through ice and nearly drowning would have probably made a REALLY great dramatic "so New England" blog story, I wasn't up for that. But seeing as how that wzs unlikely I decided to slide across the frozen ice to get closer so I could get a few photos. Again, no zoom lens, so this was the best I could get. Think The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe:

Then we were back up to join the rest of the group and the eventually off to Hebron. It was a really fun weekend.