Aug 29, 2007

Evergreen State Fair

Well, I'm a little behind the times but here's how our day at the fair went;


On (last) Sunday afternoon, Hotness and I decided to go to the State Fair.
After picking up tickets at the grocery store in town ('cause they're $2 cheaper) we headed off to go eat bad-for-you food, see farm animals, and watch the freaky people wandering around.

I've pretty much grown-up at this fair. I lived higher up on the hill above it for quite a few years, and my grandmother used to have a booth selling hand-sewn articles in one of the buildings.
My aunt was also a superintendent of one of the display buildings, so I got to work at the fair (and therefore get in free) when I was younger.

Anyway, having said all that... not a whole lot has really changed and yet quite a bit has changed.
It's still fun, but as I get older it seems that the fair gets smaller.

Some of the food booths have been there for more than 30 years, and new ones have come and gone.
One of the new ones was a "resturant" that had tables and served you your food. (Instead of standing in line & waiting)
They were offering 'gator bites and fried catfish.
Hmmm... I've never tried alligator before and Hotness has never had catfish. So guess where we ate first?
Yup!


Hotness and her catfish, with a big ol' serving of baked beans!
She loved it! I'll have to make it at home sometime. It's been a while since I've had catfish.
The fried 'gator bites.
Honestly? You could've told me they were chicken nuggets. I couldn't tell the difference. They were really good, but when people say "it tastes like chicken", this really did.

After eating, we looked at the old farm equipment and tractors. Nowadays it's unusual to see "MADE IN USA" on a product, but it was cool to see so many items that displayed it proudly. Ah... simpler times.

Not really much in the way of action at the fair.
Mostly we looked at the animals, and this year there was a display of exotic animals to view.
I had never seen a live zebra before, but they had two of them. They're kinda cool-looking close-up.
(I hear that you can get your picture taken with a zebra in Tijuana, but it's really a pony painted with black & white stripes)
After that we went to the horse barns. I can never escape the pull of anything horse-related when Hotness is with me. But it wasn't a total waste of time. I bought two raffle tickets to win a young draft horse, so we'll see what happens.

Then we watched the lumberjack show. It was w-a-y smaller than the Deming, WA lumberjack show, but still was fun.

We wandered around some more but like I said, it seems like the fair gets smaller every year.
We stopped to eat some more "fair food". (Hotness had an ice cream cone, I had an elephant ear)

There wasn't much else to see or do, other than go to the carnival, so we headed back towards the car to go home.
We passed the WA State Dairy Women booth, and of course I couldn't pass up getting my annual "Purple Cow"*!
And closer to the gate we picked up some Fair scones for breakfast the next morning.

It sounds kind of boring when I talk about it, but really the fair (or ANY fair for that matter) needs to be experienced. We had a lot of fun and surprisingly didn't spend a lot of money this time.

I hope you got a chance to go to a fair this summer in your neck of the woods.

Our next fair (and the last one for us this year) is coming up in Sept.
We're going to the Puyallup Fair to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert. Yay!
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* a "Purple Cow" is:
blackberry ice cream
blackberry syrup
lemon-lime soda
It's served as a float, but quickly turns into a fizzy, purple, blackberry cup of Heaven! I have one every year at the fair.

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