Fairbanks, AK I'm talking to you!

I have a 1,000 Places To See Before You Die desk calendar - you may be familiar with the book of the same name. Each day spotlights either a travel destination or a travel experience and causes me to spend the first ten minutes of my workday daydreaming about far-off places. Yesterday had a winter wonderland theme, with a picture of ice skaters on the frozen Rideau Canal in Ottowa, Canada. (Yeah, I’d never heard of the canal, either.) Also on yesterday’s page was a list of four other cold-weather cities and the winter festivals for which they’re known. One caught my eye - the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, Alaska. Now, I know this blog has a reader who calls Fairbanks home. You know who you are. Have you been to this festival? More importantly, do you have pictures you could share with the class? Email them to me and, with your permission, I’ll put a couple on the blog. We’ll call it a little ode to winter weather and the beauty it possesses! Of course I can wax poetic about winter weather because, unlike a lot of you, I don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis. So bear with me!