TOWN OF MANLIUS – Green Lakes State Park will once again be hosting its Frosty Forest event this Saturday, Jan. 18, from 1 to 4 p.m. The annual family-friendly event will be free to attend, but as with the park’s Wicked Woods drive-thru around Halloween and its Fishstock event in the spring, non-perishable food items or monetary donations will be accepted, with everything collected at the state Route 290 ticket booth going toward Food Bank of Central New York. The park’s main entrance off 290 by the beach area, located at 7900 Green Lakes Road in Fayetteville, is the one attendees should use to access the event because the Route 5 park entrance on the golf course side is blocked off during the winter due to its icier road. The preferred place to park is the west beach parking lot, said Green Lakes State Park’s office manager Ashley Vollmer. The wintertime event put on with the Office of New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is organized in coordination with Town of Manlius Recreation and the Village of Fayetteville, and officers from the Town of Manlius Police Department and firefighters from the Kirkville Fire Department will also be present that day. The afternoon will also feature ice sculptures to pose with, a Daily Diner food truck to order from, and bonfires on the beach to warm up beside, and attendees will be able to interact with Kindred Moon Kennel’s team of Siberian Husky sled dogs too. Meanwhile, the park will have horse-drawn wagon rides that start at the Tulip Hill parking lot before taking a lakeview route. For Frosty Forest, goodie bags containing popcorn and event stickers will be handed out to vehicles entering the park. If people provide food or contribute monetary donations, they’ll receive a raffle ticket as well that gets turned into the mobile Manlius Police station set up at the park. Put together by Vollmer and Green Lakes’ office supervisor Allyson Kampf, the raffle basket being given to the winner announced later on will include an Empire Pass for unlimited seasonal day-use entry to New York State Parks facilities as well as a Dunkin’ gift card, gingerbread-related items, and other snacks and trinkets. The goodie bags will also come with a wanted poster with the face and description for a hidden mini snowman nicknamed Frosty, which will be the object of a scavenger hunt. Every half hour during the Frosty Forest event, clues as to where to find the little snowman will be read over the PA system, and whoever finds him gets a $100 gift card to Wegmans. New this year will be a guided hike led by environmental educator Katie Mulverhill that begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday. The meeting spot for that walk is the Environmental Education Center, the brown building near the first parking lot, and hikers will be taken on part of the Green Lake Trail to be informed about some of the animals people can find in the park. Vollmer said that Frosty Forest is a nice motivation to get people out and about in the winter and that snowy weather is favored to a point because it would fit in with the event’s wintry theme and allow for rentals of snowshoes in kid and adult sizes available out of the on-site Environmental Education Center. If it gets to be too frigid or too much of a blizzard outside that afternoon, the event would likely be pushed back like it was last year, Vollmer said. People can keep up with updates about any potential weather-related cancellations by following the Green Lakes State Park Facebook page.