... liz and i drove over to new hampshire to visit with sarah and gordie and share an outing with adrien ... i picked up liz at her cousin's house which is at the end of a dirt road somewhere in the hills along the new hampshire border ... grace and her husband have taken over an old homestead, the house was built over 170 years ago ...
... after visiting sarah and gordie (and rufus, the dog) for awhile we picked up adrien and drove over "the kank" to loon mountain, where we easily found "ice castles" ... first impressions were ambiguous, from the outside it seemed it might be one of those overpriced tourist trap sort of things ... then a man who was leaving offered adrien his untorn entrance bracelet, so our opinions settled towards the "let's give it a shot" side of the equation ...
... walking in beneath the icicle encrusted arch, wondering if at some time one of the frozen stalactites had broken free and impaled an innocent visitor, we made a quick decision that ice castles, was both figuratively and literally a very, very cool place, indeed ...
... right off i decided i needed the girls to pose ... still not quite completely familiar with all my new camera's controls, adrien ended up having to remind me, "we're sitting on ice, dad, and our asses are beginning to freeze" ...
... some of the ... hmmmmm, well, they looked like ice miners ... some of the staff were working to drain away the meltwater that was accumulating at the exit opening of one of the sliding tunnels ...
... every corner we turned in the labyrinth like maze of ice walls brought to us a new show ... liz learned that hundreds of l.e.d. lights are frozen into the structure ... as we watched, the colors changed, slowly fading from one point on the spectrum to glow anew in a new color ...
... scattered throughout were all sorts of weird sculptures and geometric shapes ...
... having been raised properly, the girls very politely* acceded to my constant fatherly requests that they pose for me ... (*hey, a dad can dream, right) ...
... of course, adrien sometimes has a different definition of "posing" ...
... there was great mystery in some of the displays ...
... liz and i decided we weren't so adult that we couldn't take a shot at the twisty-turny tunnel through the heart of one of the ice mountains ... adrien did a good job managing a camera even i haven't yet fully mastered ...
... my little girls ...
... ice castles is for everyone, but little children seem to immerse their innocent wonder into the surrealistic crystalline landscape ...
... as we were leaving i met jennifer, in this delightful place an artist in ice ...
... as i hoped would be the result, i so enjoy watching these grownup sisters ...
... we didn't hit a moose or skid off the road, so the ride back up over the kank was a good one ...