Ready to experience one of the largest winter festivals in the U.S.—and definitely the largest in the midwest? It’s the World of Winter Festival in Grand Rapids, MI, and it includes a dazzling array of activities to chase away the chill of the snow and embrace its wintry beauty. For two months, continuing until March 10, the festivities include massive art installations, a silent disco, "snowga" (yoga in the snow, help!), a spicy noodle eating contest, ice piano performances and more.
Let’s start with the outdoor art installations. More than 20 of these large-scale Instagrammable pieces are lit up at night (and worth visiting during the day, too). There are eight enormous inflatable frogs, called Nightwalkers, created by Chalk River Labs, while Permafrost features three even bigger life-sized mastodons by Belgian artist Fisheye. A light and music show happens every 10 minutes under a giant dome at Calder Park, an installation called Dandelion by Amigo & Amigo out of Australia. Many of the installations are interactive, such as Retro Rapids, which broadcasts a videogame you play on your phone to a giant wall, made by local artists Damon Hartmeier, Michael Conley and Zecharya of Lucid Aesthetic.
“Snowga” is a chance to do a free one-hour yoga class (with complimentary hot beverages, thankfully) outside whatever the weather; that takes place on February 10. You might be wearing ski pants on top of your yoga pants! There are ice sculptures galore, and recurring free walking tours to be oriented to them, as well as a Black History walking tour. You can lay down paint on the ice rink to “paint the park” on February 17, and participate in several contests, such as the Great Lakes Snow Snake Competition where you can win $1,000 by throwing a snow snake along a trough in the snow, a Native American game that dates back 500 years. Another contest is the spicy noodle eating contest, a great one to combat the cold from the inside out.
There are so many more activities we can’t recount them all here, but we’re guessing you won’t want to miss the outdoor silent disco or the Human Hungry Hippo Tournament, recreating the child’s board game with humans pulled on snow tubes to capture balls. For dining, there are plenty of food trucks as well as restaurants and brewpubs to duck into if you really have to get out of the cold.
Basically, this festival makes winter so much fun that you embrace the beauty of the changing season and the chance to huff your laughter so it’s visible to all in the chill air. And after all, you can always put on another layer.
