I went to Frisco to see my friend, Bethany, who was in town.  We were going to go snowshoeing.  I wasn’t looking forward to snowshoeing since I bit off more than I could chew the day before and I was feeling a bit beat up.  Who knew snowshoeing could be so brutal?  I got to Frisco and it was snowing sideways.  It was bitter cold, you couldn’t see very far and the wind was just mean.  After we caught up a little, I suggested we forget the original plan and go to the ice castles instead.  She loved the idea.  I had been to the ice castles 5 or 6 years ago and thought they were fun so I was excited to see them again.  Each year they build a structure out of ice in a park.  It has small passageways, tunnels and big rooms.  Now they have slides too!  When we paid for our tickets, the guy told us we were in luck because the alpine slide was open.  We got in the castle, wandered around, crawled through some tunnels and took a ton of pictures.  At the back of the castle we saw a bunch of people working, wearing hard hats.  Should we be wearing hard hats?  They were working on the big slide.  Apparently they had to close it down because it was launching people quite a distance.  They might have it open in an hour.  We were disappointed because we didn’t want to wait around an hour.  So we decided to do one last loop through the castle and take a few more photos.  Right as we were leaving, we saw a large crowd near the slide.  They got it open!  We rushed up and stood in line with a few adults and mostly kids.  The sun came out as if to bless our slide runs!  All in all, quite a beautiful day.

Also, I’d like to promote Bethany’s blog if you are interested.  She is hiking (as well as other means of non-motorized travel) the length of the Americas while connecting with the history and people of the land.