Ice Around Town 2012 part 1

Every January, local chainsaw carvers and businesses team up to decorate the area with fabulous ice sculptures. The sculptures are finished in time to coincide with the T200 and the Peninsula Winter Games. Jim and I spend the first part of the day watching the official start of the race, then have some lunch and drive around taking photos of the ice. It was a brilliant, sunny day and the ice was gorgeous against the blue sky.

Click on any of the photos to enlarge them. Seriously, do. The detail in the ice is amazing and I wish you could have seen them in person. And I wish I could convey the scale of the sculptures, too. Some of them were made from several large blocks of ice and were easily 10 or 12 feet tall.

My personal favorite (well, one of them) is this breaching whale in front of Soldotna Professional Pharmacy.

McDonald's in Kenai offers a large fries:

McDonald's in Soldotna offers a coffee to wash them down with:

Soldotna Mini Storage commissioned a bear catching a salmon.

It was one of our favorites, but it was in shadow enough that we weren't able to get photos that even pretended to do it justice. Here's the best we could get of the bear's face and the salmon:

Davis Block and Concrete's snow machiner was really impressive:

The Duck Inn has a frosty mug in case you're thirsty on this fine chilly day:

ConocoPhillips and the Peninsula Winter Games offers children on a sled:

Alaska Communications gives us a school of swimming salmon. Oooooh, pretty. I could see this as a crystal sculpture in any art gallery anywhere.

Foster Construction proves that bulldozers can be adorable:
Dr. Jerry Hu and Bugs Bunny team up to remind us all to brush our teeth!
Binkley Street Dental likes Swiper the Fox from Dora the Explorer:

Soldotna Dental Arts completes the toothy-animal theme with an extremely lifelike woodchuck:

Blazy Construction's howling wolf:
Sweeney's and Mykel's wouldn't be right without a leprechaun and penguin:
Bucket's Sports Grill has a Super Bowl trophy. Y'know, in case you needed a suggestion for a place to eat while watching The Big Game.

Stanley Chrysler's Dodge Ram is incredible:
Stanley Ford in Kenai puts a moose in the driver's seat (which sounds a bit scary to me!):

Kenai Watershed Forum's logo:

Arby's in Soldotna hints that even bears need Good Mood Food:

The Tustumena 200 and the Soldotna Aspen Hotel had a wonderfully detailed musher, sled and dog:
The Kenai airport continues their animal-in-the-cockpit theme this year with a wolf aviator:

We missed the next two sculptures on the day we spent looking at the ice, so I went back a few days afterwards, after a heavy snowfall, and took pictures of the ice in front of Airport Equipment Rental:

And Lynden Transport.

That's probably enough photos for one post, but I hope you liked these and will check back in a few minutes to see photos of interactive sculptures!