Today, we had a fair-ly amazing day. It certainly was an a-fair to remember. We payed a discount fair.This morning, we got out of bed fair-ly early, despite the anger of Zeus keeping us up half the night. We hopped onto the interstate and headed south to attend our first ever Iowa State Fair!!!
We had heard from a lot of people that the State Fair here is fantastic, and maybe even the BEST IN THE WORLD (Minnesotans would argue that the Great Minnesota Get Together is better, but I have no opinion as of yet; although, it is only about 3-1/2 hours to St Paul, so maybe I'll head up north later this week to do some comparison shopping). Based on some of the things I have read about the Fair so far - people camping there and going to the fair for all 10 days; the butter cow; corn dogs! - we were very much anticipating the event. And I couldn't wait to see if I could give myself a heart attack by sampling all the deep fried things on a stick.
After riding a shuttle from the parking lot to the fairgrounds, we began wandering through the tractors, combines, and other farm implement displays to make our way to Kimberly's favorite part of the fair: the jams, jellies, and canning section.
But before we could get there, I had something I needed to do:
This is only my second career State Fair, but there's one thing I have already learned: no State Fair is complete if you don't have a corn dog.After savoring that succulent piece of mixed, macerated pork parts, coated and deep-fried, we finally made it over to the caning area. Kimberly and I have a done a little caning ourselves, and although it's worked out well in terms of flavor and 'lack-of-botulism,' none of our foods come out half as pretty as these.
My favorite, which we don't have a picture of, was the pickled green beans, with alternating green and white beans, giving the jar a striped appearance.
From there, we started wandering the fairgrounds, just taking in all the atmosphere, the mullets and fashion, the midway, and the food. Especially the food.Onion rings? Check.
Fried cheese curds? Check.
Deep fried twinkies, oreos, and snickers, all that the same booth? Check.
Pork chop on a stick? Check (the guy in the front there is enjoying one in the photo).
Whole turkey legs? Check (this is the one item I wished I had eaten the most; it looked so good).Cheese on a stick (I have no idea what that is)? Meatballs on a stick? Chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick? Nutbars on a stick? Fry bread? Check. Check. Check. Check. And check.
They even have this (right there in the middle):
Having eaten to the point of nausea [We actually stopped eating after the corn dog, onion rings, and cheese curds and a beverage, because, well, we felt sick. Walking by the remainder of the booths, although inspiring, also didn't help. I kind of understand why people go to the Fair everyday, just so they can eat all the fried things without dying. The list of things we didn't eat make me look forward to next year's Fair - I know to have a game plan next time] we wandered over to the John Deere Agriculture Building, to check out the prize winning fruits and veggies.You know, the Iowa State Fair wouldn't be complete with some
(more pics of the veggies, and the Fair in general, will be uploaded to Flickr soon).One of the more interesting portions was the "weird veggies" area. As I understand it, if you find a mis-shapen veggie growing in your garden, you submit it for this category. This year, a double potato won. Honestly, I have no idea how this didn't win:
(hint: it's a cantaloupe growing inside a car muffler)On our way outside, we saw this:
That there is the 1st prize -winning pumpkin, weighing in at over 1,100 pounds. But we were in luck, because not only is that the 2007 winning pumpkin, that pumpkin set the State Fair Record - that right there is the largest pumpkin EVER at the Iowa State Fair. Impressive, to say the least.
Next on our agenda was the livestock pens, where we took in the quarter horses, the leghorn roosters, the llamas, the un-castrated and 'right-there-in-your-face' bulls (those things look painful), and this:
Now, I'm not sure how they can claim that it's the WORLD'S Largest Boar (maybe they do a worldwide comparison, maybe it's the only fair to have a big boar competition, I don't know), but I do know that the actual 'World's Biggest Boar' didn't fit in my camera's view finder. So thusly, I present the 'WORLD'S SECOND LARGEST BOAR' (in case the first place winner can't fulfill his duties):
After about 5 hours, we were starting to fade. It was time for us to head back home. But we still hadn't seen the main atraction of the Iowa State Fair: the butter cow.Apparently, every year a local artist carves a cow out of butter. No really, this happens every year. Really. And every year, there's also a 'surprise' carving. I couldn't wait to see it.
And the butter cow did not disappoint:
The picture isn't great: the cow's muscles had texture and his ribs looked oh so tasty. And the surprise: yup, Harry Potter. Unfortunately, Neville wasn't there.Overall, it's hard to comprehend just how much stuff there is at the State Fair unless you see it. The numbers of livestock and veggies is uncountable. We didn't even go to the midway, the place setting competition, or to any concerts. While going everyday is probably a little overkill, I could see going multiple days in the future.
And to top it off, tomorrow night, to close the Fair, Sanjaya and his band of merry idiots are the closing act.
