Shanty fest

When winter hits, frozen lakes and ponds become busy real estate in Minnesota.

Many cities hold winter festivals and ice fishing contests out on the lake. Dave and I attended one on a beautiful Saturday on Medicine Lake.

This festival is a two-month long event where art students from around the country come to built a themed shanty on the ice. They keep it open on weekends for the public to check out.

There were shantys made of bubble wrap and containers. I thought this festival was pretty neat, so I took lots of pictures. Here's Shanty rundown:

The energy shanty (clear plastic with red door above) had stationary bicycles that you could ride to generate enough energy to brew a pot of coffee.
There was a knitting shanty.

And a paper shanty--made of cardboard and paper tube. You could go inside to learn a paper craft, orgami.

This multicolored shanty is the News shanty, which featured news from around the globe.

This wooden shack with a round tin silo was the Sauna shanty. There was a working sauna in the tin part, which was nice and toasty. About 10 people could fit in there, and you started sweating quickly in the big coats.

Here's the bubble wrap shanty.

This is the exhibition shanty that showcased fur and exploration around the globe.

The Dance Shanty had a boombox and dance floor.

My favorite shanty was the Confession Shanty, which invited people to come inside and write down their confessions, then staple them to the outside of the building. It was a riot reading what people wrote... everything from "I hit a red squirrel with a 2 x 4" to "I wish I had more free time away from my kids" to "fill-in-the-blank people make me nervous."

Confession shanty from outside:

One group had a series of Shantys with a game theme. Each shanty looked like a die, and each had a board game inside. Groups would get in the shanty to play different games. (He's drilling a hole in the ice here. It's about 3-feet thick)

There was a theatre shanty that did a 10-minute show every 20 minutes. I'm sure there was only a 10 person crowd in there at a time.

The submarine shanty looked like a big sub coming out of the ice. Ironically, you had to stay outside of this shanty.

Several hippie cars were out on the ice. "Art on Wheels" This one was a car covered with plates.

This car was covered with grass. We went in the hippie shack behind them. I'm fairly certain there was a bong somewhere in there. We got out pretty quickly.

Some we didn't post: A 3-story shanty, a big shanty made of shipping containers, a moveable shanty that made loops around the whole place, a food shant.... I could really see a big Mardi Gras Shanty out here...