Nestled inside the resort town of Lincoln, NH, you can find dozens of restaurants and lodging options, a handful of outdoor stores, and Ice Castles, which is simply put, an outdoor frozen wonderland. From Boston, it's a 2.5 hour drive, but because of the impending storm and poor road conditions, it took us about ~3.5 hours to get there. Because I am neurotic about being on time, we left Boston at around 8:30 and made it to our reservation. I purchased the tickets online earlier in the week for the 12-12:30PM time slot, and I highly recommend that you buy them ahead of time instead of banking on the stand by option (stand by was sold out when we arrived).  It's important that you arrive within your time window or you may not be able to enter, and you can stay as long as you want.

As soon as we entered, I was captivated by one question, and pretty much one question only (ok, two questions) - HOW did they sculpt this fairly large sized tourist destination, and what will be its fate come springtime? I do not know the answer to either question, but we had such a wonderful time exploring the various nooks and crannies of the castle. There were a lot of Frozen, GOT vibes going on, but we had to leave after 45 minutes, because we couldn't feel our feet at all. It was around 10 degrees, and our hiking shoes (the recommended footwear) were not really doing much in terms of insulation.

Overall, it was a pretty interesting experience, and I'd say that it was worth it. We went exploring around the White Mountains National Forest afterwards, and I snowshoed for the first time! This part of the trip made the drive worthwhile - hiking is one of my staple activities during the summer, so it was nice to see the mountains blanketed in snow.