The other night I had ice on my wipers, so I tried to clean them off, but they don't seem to bend up without hitting the hood (they seem recessed). Do you have to pop the hood to do this ?

 

this also happened to me, there are two stages the wipers can sit at, above the hood, or pushed down nesstled under the hood, to pull them up either pull the wipers up (the direction of a normal stroke) or turn the wipers on then shut off the car mid-way through the stroke and clean.

 

The wipers can be placed in normal mode, and winter mode. WInter mode sits higher on teh windshield as to let the ice and snow accumulate in the cowl during inclement weather without blocking passage of teh wipers to the rest of the windshield.

 

step 1) turn on ignition and turn on wipers.
step 2) turn off ignition when wipers are in the up position
step 3) change blades as needed.