McCall Winter Carnival

McCall, ID

Website: http://mccallchamber.org/carnival_home.html

At the McCall Winter Carnival, artists create enormous ice sculptures and visitors can enjoy sleigh rides, snowmobiling, ice skating, skiing and even elk viewing. Highlights include a Mardi Gras parade. During the festival the city's Ponderosa State Park and Brundage Mountain Ski Area offer free skiing lessons and the ice rink is a hubbub of activity as pros come to teach beginners how to skate.

The first winter carnival in McCall was in 1924, a fun filled three days that started when the largest train ever to enter McCall arrived carrying 248 persons, including Idaho Governor C. Moore. The Payette lakes Sports Carnival, as it was then called, treated its guests to a large variety of events, dog sled racing; with driv­ers from all over the state, ski racing and jumping, ski joring (a skier pulled by a horse), snow shoveling contests and snowshoe races.