Arctic Blast XVI Fun!

Watertown’s Leif Jensen (pictured above) won a pair of Minnesota Viking season tickets. A $30,000 prize party closed out Arctic Blast XVI Sunday as more than 900 people packed the Grand Casino Mille Lacs Event and Convention Center main ballroom for the two-plus hour prize drawing giveaway.

Morning on-air radio personality John Hines of WCCO-AM radio, and former Viking players “benchwarmer” Bob Lurtsema and Doug Sutherland combined to emcee the event that drew an estimated 4,000 visitors to the greater Mille Lacs Lake area last weekend.

For an extensive array of photos, checkout The Make It Mille Lacs Arctic Blast 2011 photo page . Once there, you will find a link to email us your photos.  We will post to that page. We will be adding some more photos to the page.

Event proceeds went to the Minnesota Vikings Children Fund.   “The fans are the best,” said former Viking Robert Tate.  “We just want to give something back to them.  They’ve always been there for us and now it’s our turn to be there for them.”  Tate joined former players Carl Lee, Jim Marshall, Matt Blair, Henry Thomas, Matt Blair, Bob Lurtsema, Doug Sutherland and Chris Dolemen at Bay Lake’s White Hawk for a Friday night VIP private party.

Saturday, it was wall-to-wall people at the four Blast Points – Blue Goose Inn, Garrison; Castaways Bar Restaurant, Malmo; Nitti’s Hunters Point Resort, Isle; and Buzzie’s On the Bay, Isle.  We were told some Arctic Blast attendees were staying in lodging as far south as Elk River.

Janelle and Eric Hart of Ely were first-time Mille Lacs-area visitors.  Eric, who works for Frontier, won a company contest for lead referrals and received a free-stay at Eddy’s Resort. “It’s a really, really big lake, and this should be a lot of  fun,” Janelle said.  The couple were waiting to accompany one of the three Viking rider contingents from McQuoid’s Resort Inn Saturday morning in Isle.