Well, somehow the entire week got away from me before I sat down to write down some of what we saw at the fair…
Better late than never I hope!
Heather, a friend of hers and I went to the state fair over the weekend.
The fair here is a big deal! I haven’t ever lived in the city that hosts a state fair before, so maybe some of that is normal. When I say “a big deal” I mostly mean that the majority of the people I talk to have plans to at least visit the fair. Often those people speak highly of the fair, again not something I typically saw a lot of in other cities. (I guess I have really only lived in 3 cities, despite my habit of frequent moves) The website for the fair promised 57 different foods on a stick, among other attractions. I didn’t really dig into the website just figured people were positive on it, I would just show up and be amazed.
We set out for the fair late afternoon Saturday, with only a vague idea where the fairgrounds even were. Once we started seeing people hawking their lawns as parking we figured we should find something and start walking, eventually settling on the local VFW chapter area, selling their lot at a slight discount to the average yard (three dollars instead of five!) They made their money back by selling us all water on our way out of the parking lot, but it was warm, and they promised it was cheaper than on the fairgrounds (turns out this wasn’t strictly speaking true, but at least they weren’t over-charging)
Another ten dollars a head got us onto the grounds, and we were at the Iowa State Fair! First up… empty lots, and some combines. I was trying to let the ladies guide our trip, but those combines looked pretty cool. I guess they came up with some neat features in the (20?) years that have passed after the manufacturing of the combine I last had a chance to really look at the internal workings of.
We then headed to a large building that had tiles all around it vaguely hinting at quilting or crafts of some sort. Once inside, we found out it was an arena, and something having to do with horses was currently in progress. There weren’t any signs, and the guy wanted us to buy a ticket or leave so we left, not sure what we missed.
Then we found our way into the adjacent barns, full of the horses not currently participating in the unknown event. I kind of forgot how big horses can be! I also started to realize how much domesticated animal knowledge I had that was new to Heather. We then headed over to a cattle barn, apparently full of dairy cattle. I don’t know if it was heat stress, or something about dairy cows, but practically every cow in that barn had visible ribs and extreme hip-points. I think it kind of set off my subconscious “there is plague and pestilence here, get out!” warnings… so I was glad to leave that barn, but we got to see lots of cows, and again I found I knew the answers to more questions than I would have guessed.
(update, I just did a quick search for “dairy cow” pictures, apparently they all look like they are starving… weird)
We then found our way into another arena, this one free, featuring a two-horse-team pulling competition. I have no idea how it really worked, but it was kind of fun to watch! Eventually that got old though, so we headed out in search of new things.
We found the 4H steer auction. I have vague memories of going to a stock-auction with my dad when I was a kid. It was kind of fun to see one again. It was also another first for Heather, and technically a first for me as I hadn’t seen an auction where they did it one bovine at a time before. As with the team-pulling the novelty wore off quickly, and it wasn’t like we were planning on buying beef-on-the-hoof.
Somewhere in transition to the 4H craft barn I found an ice cream cone, and we walked past the Iowa Pork booth, featuring the one and only “pork chop on a stick” however the line for that was probably 75 people long. I figured there would be other exciting “on a stick options later”
After the craft barn, full of nice but not really noteworthy fruit, vegetables, flowers, and craft type things, we headed to a nursery barn. The barn featured young examples of most of your stereotypical farmyard animals. To be honest, my thoughts when I walked in were basically “eh, I have seen this before” but I figured it would be fun for the rest of our little group. They had video playing of a live sheep birth, not the most photogenic thing you can imagine. I think it kind of shocked Heather. I don’t know if it was the video or just the fact that we had been browsing a lot of barnyard animals, but we didn’t give that venue much coverage, and then headed out again.
We stopped to get a Falafel for our guest in the main vendor area, then headed over to the non 4H food building to see if we could locate some winning sticky-buns a woman from church had entered. We saw a lot of tasty looking food, but the sticky-bun entries were no longer on display. A little more wonder-by sight seeing and it was starting to get late. I realized I hadn’t actually tried any foods on a stick, so we headed back to the main food vending strip, to see what we could find.
I have no idea where the exotic options were, maybe I was just being overwhelmed by choices and didn’t notice them, but it appeared that everybody in the area we were in only sold corn-dogs as their “on a stick” option. I didn’t really want a corn-dog so I searched a little and eventually settled on cotton candy. Not really exotic, but it was on a stick, and I thought it sounded good. For the record I don’t really like cotton candy… I don’t know if that happened because I haven’t had it for so long, or if I didn’t like it that much before and just forgot.
After our last pass of the food, we headed back to the car, feeling like we saw at least a good swath of the fair.
-Jordan
P.S. Sorry for the mammoth post, I just wasn’t sure this was interesting enough to warrant splitting into several posts.
Nelsons 