Winter Carnival Ice Sculptures

Today is the final day for contestants to finish the ice sculptures for St Paul's Winter Carnival contest.  It was about 16 degrees and I had some time and I needed a walk in the outdoors.  I went to watch what was happening at Rice Park, the scene of the carving.  I parked by the Cathedral rather than paying eight bucks to park, and it gave me a nice walk down the hill to the park by the Ordway Theatre.  The carvers were hard at work with their chainsaws and ice picks, chipping away at the things in the ice that didn't look like their chosen subject.  This was the most colorful of the ones that were already finished.

There is also a block long wall of ice along one side of Rice Park partly to advertise the sponsors of the contest. It was a popular place to get one's picture taken, so I tried to get an image of as much of it as I could see,

The sculptors were hard at work with their chainsaws and chippers. It's pretty amazing what detail work they are able to do with these implements. There were plenty of onlookers enjoying the activities and taking in the crisp air. I noticed that the hot dog vendor on site was doing a brisk business selling bratwurst sandwiches at four bucks a piece.  There was another guy selling cold weather gear for the unprepared and at premium prices.

Here's another sculpture that photographed pretty well. It's sort of an Egyptian motif, perhaps a modified sphinx.  It's right next to a park bench as well.

Also going on at the park was an event that I had not known about. It's a robotic snow plow competition. Several colleges entered robots which were programmed to use sensors to detect the location of snow in front of them and to plow the snow off to one side. I watched a plow entered by the University of Michigan at Dearborn attempt a 'U' shaped course. They started out well but soon veered to the left off course, hit the outer barrier, and had to regroup and probably restart. By that time I was getting a little chilled and left to find my transportation home.

Tomorrow, I'm likely to go find the Winter Carnival snow sculptures at the Fairgrounds. That contest ended today, too, but one cold weather activity a day suffices. I'm hoping for a sunnier day, but that may not come to pass. The weather creatures are predicting 3-6 inches of new white snow before tomorrow night.