Something for everyone

Ice sculptures aren't just for wedding receptions and fancy balls anymore. It isn't just swans they can carve out of ice. There really is something for everyone. We went on our 2nd annual trip to Fairbanks a few weeks ago to Ice Alaska, the world ice sculpting championship, and I thought I'd share a few of the more random sculptures that I saw.

 This is one of the first ones that we saw and I thought it was neat. Then I thought, huh, it kind of looks like intestines. 

Then we came back at night to see the sculptures all lit up. They had a red light illuminating it. It is now sealed forever in my mind as the intestine sculpture.

 This one is a tiny ballerina on top of a giant hand. It's not exactly funny ha ha so much as I just don't get it. Why exactly is there a tiny dancer on a giant digit?  I feel like I'm missing something deeper about this one. Or maybe I'm not.

 Then there is Pinocchio and two winged creatures. It was beautiful, but I only remember there being one fairy in the story of Pinocchio, and I don't remember either of them attacking Pinocchio while he begs for his life. Then again, I don't think I've watched Pinocchio it about 20 years or so.

Here is some alien creature with spider like arms and an inordinate of number of breasts.

And here it is at night. Now I see it also seems to have some sort of fetus in a capsule. Slightly creepy.

 I liked this one.

 It's hard to tell in the light, but it is a person sitting by a campfire roasting a marshmallow with his sled dog sitting along side him.

 Then we moved on to true Americana: rodeo. It was a complete rodeo with a bullfighter (not to be confused with a rodeo clown. BIG difference.),

 Barrel racing, 

 Bull riding, 

 And bulldogging (or it may be calf roping. I can't really tell from this picture if there is a rope around the calf's neck or not). A full rodeo. They even made a fence around the arena. Amazing...

Now we move on to something from a Salvadore Dali painting. I would know, I went through a Dali phase in college, although I can't recall what the name of this particular one is. 

 You're guess is as good as mine with this one. I really like it though. They even carefully raked the snow around the sculpture like sand in a zen garden.

 A giant arachnid about to eat a grasshopper. Very detailed and lifelike. Except for the fact that it was about 8 feet long.

 A snow machine pulling a guy on skis. This one was really impressive. I think it won in the big block division. 

Now do you see what I mean about there being something for everyone? So far we have intestines, a tiny dancer on a giant finger, Pinocchio begging for his life, a multi-breasted alien,  a complete rodeo, a Salvadore Dali impersonator, and a snow machine nearly 20 feet in the air. If you can't find something you like here, you're just not looking.

And now the pièce de résistance. What ice sculpture competition would be complete with out an homage to AC/DC? Not this one.