Travel Channel comes to "Edge of America" for Icebox Days

He and production assistant Jamie McVicker said, rest assured, this is a positive program. Yes, they are looking for “offbeat” activities, but not to make fun of tight-knit communities, they said.

“It’s done in a good way,” said McVicker who could be seen making snow angels outside the Backus Community Center after filming Turkey Bowling and the Chili Challenge. “We try to find events that many people may not know about. We present towns and their people to the rest of America. It’s all very positive.”

The joke, Edgers said, is really on him and his fellow city-dwellers. I. Falls and other small towns don’t have traffic congestion or high costs of living, which preoccupy so many from what really matters.

“We don’t make fun of people,” he insisted repeatedly. “Our show is about celebrating these cool things, not to say some of these things aren’t weird. But that’s the point of having fun. In many ways, small towns have found ways to make life as interesting as possible while keeping it affordable and their families close.”

Literally, he was the butt of the joke, Edgers said, when he played in the Icebox Boot Hockey Tournament.

He slid, slipped and crashed onto the rink and against the boards – a lot, he said.

“We’re going all around all the country looking for things outside the mainstream, opposite of a football game or watching The Stones play at half speed for $800, something more entertaining to me,” Edgers told The Journal. “When we’re in Colorado, we don’t go to Denver. When we go to Minnesota, we won’t go to Minneapolis.

“The show’s called Edge of America, and this is literally the edge of America.”

It is a little bit of a concern with TV what it is now and what they will do with the footage, said Faye Whitbeck, International Falls Chamber of Commerce president.

“But they never implied at all they were making goons of us,” she said of the polite crew.

They said they had a great time here, and some are coming back in the summer, said the area’s Convention and Visitor Bureau Director Pete Schultz. He spent a good deal of time with the filmmakers, acting as their guide.

He said they not only featured the odd events but also things like the candlelight snowshoeing and nature. They also used mini-cameras on the puck and stick during the boot hockey.

“I think they got a lot of good shots and picked the most colorful events,” Schultz said. “I was impressed with the effort. I say watch the show and see what’s coming.”

It’s free publicity, and Borderland’s stunning blue skies, lakes, rivers and endless forests speak multitudes visually, event organizers said.

“We have four seasons, and we make the most of it. It speaks for our resiliency and great character,” Whitbeck said, an opinion echoed by the host.

Of course, this also isn’t at all the first major network or program to feature Icebox Days and International Falls and its tempestuous temps. It’s not even the first time The Travel Channel has been here, according to the celebration’s brochure.

MSNBC, The Weather Channel, CBS as well as national magazines and radio programs, newspapers and other forms of media from around the world have come to check out “The Ice Box of the Nation,” Whitbeck said.

“I think The Travel Channel people will show us as kind of quaint and casual, but I wouldn’t say they were making fun of people,” Whitbeck said. “Odd is not necessarily bad either. Whatever opens the door to people seeing us and coming here.”

Since shooting began in the spring, the Edge of America so far has explored “Pig-N-Ford” races (Yes, racing in a Model T Ford with a pig at one’s side.), bike jousting, rattlesnake corralling and climbing frozen waterfalls, among other events, Edgers said.

“It’s not weird for us because we’ve lived here and been going to Icebox Days forever,” said resident Tina Besch.

Edgers and his crew are wrapping up taping in the next month or so, he said. It’s a 13-episode season. Each show features three events in one state.

Next up for Minnesota is Walker’s Eelpout Festival in mid-February, where the ugly bottom dwellers are caught and weighed for a total to determine the winner.

He said his third Minnesota event will involve skijoring, but Edgers wasn’t sure when or where yet he’d being engaging in the activity in which someone is usually pulled on cross-country skies by a harnessed dog. In the meantime, his team is taking a bit of a break now as he does press junkets to promote the premier.

And Edgers’ impression of I. Falls?

“Everybody seems to celebrate the cold,” he said. “The people here are very creative. This is a nice small town. People know how to have fun. I wish where I was from we had something like this.”

He brought with him a nearly frozen but cheerful eight-person production staff. Some of them could be seen shivering one moment and either jumping or falling onto one of I. Falls’ countless snowbanks.

For the record, many residents did the same after the a layer of ice covered the city a couple weeks ago.

And this does not appear to be a budding television star with a cliche ego. He worked through a cold, sat down with folks, listened to stories, told jokes and tried to answer myriad questions while losing a battle to keep his glasses from fogging up in crisp dry air.

Prior to joining the annual Smoosh Race outside The Viking Bar on Third Street, his nose started to bleed. A tissue and laugh later, and he was helping “The Old Fogies” defeat the “Gizzard Girlz” in a made-for-TV rematch of the original race.

He said he’s not certain when the Minnesota episode will run “though it’s technically impossible for it to go anytime in the next six or eight weeks,” Edgers wrote in an email. “I assume late in our season.”

Whitbeck said she hopes the program makes it to the I. Falls’ episode and doesn’t get canceled, “but you never know.”

Edgers said he got his TV start after making the 2010 documentary “Do it Again,” in which he tried to reunite The Kinks. Evidently, he said the channel enjoyed it enough to give him the opportunity to make an Edge of America pilot and then the series.

To get a take on some of Edgers’ views on I. Falls, go to his Twitter account, twitter.com/geoffedgers.