Minnesota can be a harsh place to live in January and February. The many months of frozen ground inspire locals to escape to exotic warmer places  or creatively deal with it by spending hours on frozen lakes in small wooden boxes. Our creative combination? The "I'd rather be..." Stay-cation Shanty!  Our shanty concept combines the ability to escape to a warmer place while spending time having fun on the ice!

Visitors will be able to participate in one of two activities:

1) Pile on those clothes!

The main activity will involve visitors dressing-up (over their winter gear or not!) and taking their photo in front of a trave-themed screen. Our shanty will include a wall of clothing and props related to different travel destination themes. Visitors can choose one set of props and clothes to put on and pose in front of a travel scene with the tag line, "I'd rather be…" scripted across the image like a postcard from a popular tourist spot (e.g., the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Grand Canyon, etc.). Visitors can interact within their group or with each other to create silly photos. Our shanty team may even join in on the fun! Once a visitor selects a costume and chooses a location, one of our group members will snap a photo of our "staycationing" visitor.  For a suggested donation we will print out this photo.  We will also upload all of the images (whether they opt for a postcard or not) for people to view and download at the end of each weekend onto our website.

2) Share your woes!

Our second activity involves the visitors' expressing where they'd rather be. While visitors wait, or in lieu of dressing up and taking a photo, there will be a wall for people to write on, titled "I'd rather be…," leaving it open for our visitors to fill in the blanks. Visitors can use this space to share their inner mid-winter yearnings or to vent some arctic angst. We will take numerous photographs of this wall and post them to our website, highlighting some of the most interesting responses. We may also integrate the scenic photographs and written responses in a bound collection of where Minnesotans would rather be in January.