Ice Castle At The Saranac Lake Winter Carnival

I left the Arctic Golf and walked over to the ice castle, always the highlight of the Winter Carnival. This year's theme was "The Groovy 60s:"

In front of the ice castle was a mysterious ice formation into which kids crawled. It turned out to be Apollo 11, which landed the first humans on the moon in 1969. This was in keeping with the "Groovy 60s" theme:

And there was an icy astronaut - perhaps Neil Armstrong?:

I thought this highly popular ice sculpture was a car until I got home. Then it occurred to me that it must have been the Lunar Module from Apollo 11. Whatever it was, the kids and their parents loved it:

A hippie Volkswagen van. This was, after all, supposed to be the Groovy 60s. People climbed into the back of it and went to the front windows so their friends on the outside could take their photo:

Next I turned to the ice palace itself and entered the front through this arched doorway. People were taking pictures of each other, sitting on the thrones:

And riding on ice motorcycles:

I walked around to the side of the ice palace:

And in through another archway:

Then I investigated the back of the ice palace, where I knew from experience that I'd find a maze created from all those blocks of ice:

And indeed there was a maze, with lots of twists, turns and dead ends:

I walked away from the ice castle and took one final photo:

There were lots of giant blocks of ice left over, and they were piled here and there around the periphery. They were huge, 5 to 6 feet long. I remember watching the construction in past years. The blocks were lifted into place with heavy equipment and then mortared with snow:

I was off to see what else looked interesting, but how could I not stop and take a photo of this cute dog. There were lots of dogs in attendance that day, but this was the only small dog I saw: