A Trip to the Fair

I love the fair. The fair to me is what America feels like. There are pie eating contests, and best strawberry jam contests, and funnel cake, and Ferris wheels, and giant pigs. I love it.

Montana has a fair, but it’s kind of lame. If you want to see a real fair, you need to hit up the Midwest.

The Iowa State Fair is in Des Moines, which is about 14 hours away. So why not go? But only for one day because I can’t take time off work. Sounds crazy right? It was.

I took the afternoon off of work and left straight from the office. Driving. So much driving. My mother came along too. It was a bonding experience.

About five hours of driving in, we get close enough to Mount Rushmore that it completely makes sense to stop. To be completely honest, you can skip this one. It isn’t the most spectacular thing in the world. It costs a lot to get in, you see the hill carved to look like some presidents, then you leave.

Heading away from Mount Rushmore, we made our way to Wall, South Dakota, home of the famous Wall Drug. Driving in this area was exceptionally uncomfortable for me because this was also the weekend of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, so the crazy bikers were weaving in and out of traffic all the way through South Dakota. In Wall, we stopped by Wall Drug. Another tourist trap that you need to go to once and then never again.

Pappy told my fortune, poorly.

Annie Oakley at Wall Drug

At this point, it became apparent that we needed to put the pedal down and put in some real progress.

We had taken my car, inherited from my late grandfather. It’s a good little car, but this was the longest trip it had ever taken, and its twelve years old. It didn’t make it. Outside of Onawa, Iowa, I had a complete electrical failure when my alternator went out. Thank god for AAA.

Five hours later and $500 poorer, back on schedule and arriving at the fair. I might have had a little freak out in the Ford garage about all of the fair I was missing because of our car trouble and tight schedule. It ended up being fine. Just fine.

When we finally got to the fairgrounds, we went at it full tilt.

Here are some highlights:

Whole smoked turkey legs. #badvegetarian

Deep fried, covered in chocolate, and on a stick. It doesn't get much better.

My annual funnel cake.

A very unfriendly llama.

Happy tiny camels.

I don't know what this is.

A friendly African antelope. He kept licking my hand.

Bat ears on a cow.

Baby brahma bull.

Kangaroo fuzz is the softest thing I have ever felt.

Quasimodo

A lady elk and her tiny elk child.

A cow made of 600 pounds of butter.

Fluffy, brushed cow.

Another fluffy, brushed out cow.

Mongo, the state's largest (3,000 lb) bull.

He was not happy.

The state's largest hog, capable of making enough bacon for 200 people.

Over 100 kinds of decorative chicken.

Milk cow.

Happy cow.

Friendly cow. :)

A Cow Wash!

Going to Des Moines for this event is something I can highly recommend, doing it in a weekend? Never again.