Ice Castles in Midway

Back in December when I was struggling what to get Gary for Christmas, I contacted a friend, Jolynn Beckstrand, to see if she would like to plan a getaway for our husbands as a gift.  She loved the idea and after a few weeks of going back and forth, we decided on the weekend of January 20-21 for our trip and The Homestead Resort and the Ice Castles as our spot.  Located up in the hills east of Heber City (which is about 20 miles south of the more famous Park City), it is an old farm location which was made into a resort many years ago.  The rooms are spread out over the area in buildings with quaint names like the Milk House, the Bunk house, and ours which was Lakeview (although I didn't see any actual lake.)

The door into our room
There were about 8 rooms in our building.

 Some of the other buildings on the property

 The welcoming eagle and bear on the front porch of the main building

We met our friends just before six in the evening and walking over to  The Ice Castles.  We have way more pictures than you want to see but it was very amazing and beautiful, especially at night.  They had classical music playing as you walked through and around the amazing ice walls, tunnels, slides and other ice structures.  Despite the temperatures being in the 20's, it wasn't too cold to enjoy.  You really should try to go see it sometime.  It was gorgeous. 

Hal and Gary
We have known Hal and Jolynn for about 36 years.
For some reason I can't find the pictures Gary took
which I download to my computer but
they aren't in the normal location so no pictures of the two of them.

tunnel

As you can see the next three pictures are the same place but with different color lights.  The colors were constantly changing although in varying speeds and lengths.

 The black of the sky added a nice contrast to the colors throughout the Ice Castles.

one of the slides

Gary and I sitting on one of the many "ice thrones" throughout the area (and yes, our bottoms got wet sitting on the cold ice.)

 They had a few "fire" shows and dancers.  This man was amazing spitting fire out of his mouth.

We then went out to eat at the onsite restaurant and then spent the evening playing games and talking (or talking and playing games, depending on how you looked at it.)  We played Five Crowns, a card game, which was fun, until about 11:30 pm. before we headed off to bed.

I woke up to the sound of the snow plow on Saturday morning so I knew the promised snow had arrived.  It looked like 3-4 inches had fallen during the night.  However listening to the Weather Channel that morning, we were grateful to just have snow.  Parts of the south had had severe weather overnight including many tornados touching down.  Tornadoes are scary but during the night even more so.

Icicles outside our bay window

We headed to breakfast and then walked down to see the outside of the Ice Castles during the day.

This is what they look like in daylight.  The blue you see is glacier blue and a natural color if the temperatures are cold enough.  The Beckstrands have been to Alaska and they said that they have seen that in "the wild".  We were lucky enough to run into a worker who helped with the building and maintaining of the whole structure.  We had an interesting conversation with him as he has had experiences with other ice structures as well. He said the whole thing could melt with just a few days of temperatures over 50 degrees in a row, especially if it was rainy.  He said this was an excellent location for it because the water is sparkly clean and the right temperature for ice castle building.  Put it on your bucket list if you are in Utah because it was a unique and fun time.

Being with friends also made it a special event.

We added one more stop on our way home and headed down to visit Ben since we were close.  We traveled down Provo Canyon which was the same drive we took as part of our mini-Hall reunion in the summer.

Deer Creek Reservoir
We saw a number of people ice fishing

Bridal Veil Falls which still had some water flowing over the ice

Ben was more upbeat today.  He has gotten permission to have other visitors from the family and friends and he starts a basic job "on unit" next week.  Working is part of the treatment and he is excited to be doing that finally.

Then we grabbed Jena at Scott's and got home about 4.

I stand by my belief that a good "get away" from life requires 4 days and three nights.  (I developed that theory after going a trips with Gary over the years and leaving our children behind .  It takes as long to prepare for 1 day as 4, it seems like, but after 4 days, I started really missing the kids so it was time to head home). This 24 hours hours flew by so fast.  We really appreciated the Pessettos who took Jena to and from her Friday night activity and for Scott, Chantel and Scarlett who kept her overnight.  Scott and Chantel said that Jena and Scarlett played non-stop except when they were asleep and they are hoping Jena comes over and hangs out after Baby James arrives.  Jena loved it too.

Back to real life....almost.....