For Christmas this year, I gave my husband a year of pre planned dates. One for each month. The activity is already mapped out and he just has to tell me what days he wants to go out. My husband and I go out to eat a lot. We run errands and get lunch, we go driving around bidding jobs and we go out to lunch, we are at home and I don’t want to cook and we go out to lunch. While I wont complain because I love food and him, it does seem a little like a habit and less like a date so I tried to come up with things we don’t normally do. Each month we have something a little out of our normal comfort zone.
Februarys date included a visit to the Midway Utah Ice Castles. We had never been and honestly, he had never heard of them. The are only available for a short time and this year has been pretty warm here in Utah anyway. When I planned it for Feb. I thought we would totally be fine and as the date got closer, I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know if we would make it to the end of Feb. so I booked right away.
When we arrived at the Homestead Resort where we stayed ( I have both good and bad things to say about this place if you want to shoot me any questions you might have if you want to book there) we were scheduled to swim in their crater shortly after check in. We went off to our room to get ready and off we went.
The Crater water was just about perfect. I thought I might be too cold because I am a baby when it comes to water temps. They say it runs about 95 degrees which I would say was pretty accurate. It was cold outside so getting in the water felt warm and wonderful. Now, I wouldn’t advice against going to the crater to swim but be aware you will have plenty of other people swimming with you even though you have to book a time slot. It was a large area and so it wasn’t horrible but, I’m all about fewer people so that was a bit of a turn off for me. Also you must wear a life jacket in the crater ( its the rules) and yet many grown adults couldn’t seem to get that and the man at the desk had to basically stand and watch until some older man stopped acting like the life jacket was intended to be worn as a diaper and actually put it on correctly. Hence my fondness for more private experiences.
We were informed while at the crater that a few days the past week they had to shut the Ice Castle down because it was just too warm. We had walked around the area earlier and had heard all the water dripping from the melting ice so I didn’t doubt that he was telling the truth one little bit. I started to get nervous for our visit which was the following day.
The night had arrived and we showed up to visit the castle and get on our sleigh ride ( I mean if we were going to do this, we wanted to do it right). As we checked in we were informed that our sleigh ride had been cancelled. Too much ice and the horses were slipping. It was a bummer but on the bright side the castle was still open. Again, tons of people…..we attended on a Monday night. I would say that they wont be open much longer as things were dripping and it was clear that the ice isn’t going to last much longer.
I would skip rushing up there this year but if you have any interest, it’s definitely something I would suggest as a special date night get away or even as a fun family adventure. I personally would love to take a model or two and go create some magical Ice Queen photos in the future. No matter how you spin it, its a trip that I think is worth taking.
