A day at the County Fair

We had a trip to the Howard County Fair yesterday with some friends and their kids, and some of the kids' friends, and although the weather started off a bit drizzly, it soon cleared up and was perfect - not too hot, like last time we went, when it was about 95F the whole time.  There was a lot of riding on rides - it was the day of the inexpensive ($12) all-you-can-ride wristband - given that tickets were a dollar each and most rides took 3 or 4 tickets, it was easy for the kids to get their money's worth from the wristbands. 

 You can just see Alex on this ride - he's actually with some random boys he didn't know, but they seemed to work well together to spin their little car as it went around.

Olivia went on the same ride with her friend Katy (daughter of two old friends of mine, and Katy's friend Melina (with the iPod). 

They didn't spin their car nearly as much as the boys did...

Then all the kids went on this ride - our group took up the whole front row except the two on the right hand side of the photo. 

Here are my own three on the left end, getting ready to go

up, up

up and over!

Alex made Sarah go on this one, which goes up and around, 

although it takes a while to build up to the around part. 

Sometimes it just hangs, upside down, for a few seconds, before it keeps going...

They also went on tamer rides, like the fun house.  There were also high swings, centrifugal things where you get pressed back against the wall  and spin, slides, and so on. In other words - it was a typical carnival/fair midway. Apparently, they rode all the rides, some of them several times, except the very small kiddie rides which they were too big for.   Which was the point of it, after all.

Olivia had never met Katy's friend Melina before, but they all got on like a house on fire, and spent most of the day talking non-stop. Typical 13 year olds, in other words. Who knows what they were discussing - probably school, shoes, nail varnish, clothes, films, music, sports (that they play - e.g. swimming, softball, netball, whatever). 

After a little while, we got tired of watching them stand in line to ride rides, so we let them stay on their own at the ride end, and we went down to look at some of the exhibits, like the 4-H stall, which had lots and lots of art and craft and cooking (and other types of) projects done by the 4-H kids - some of them pretty impressive. My favourite was these rocks, in the senior section:

I'm seriously thinking I might see if Olivia could paint me some rocks like these - aren't they adorable?

We also looked at the produce and cooking displays, and saw things like baskets of eggs

and lots of plates of different vegetables.

I particularly liked the freaky vegetables section, including, among other things,  a number of strange potatoes and this rather odd tomato:

There were also canned goods and jam, and lots of baked goods. As my friend Debbie pointed out, they really ought to let us taste the baked goods, so we can see if we agree with the judges' decisions...

The overall theme of the fair this year for themed entries, was horses, so there were lots of pictures of horses, cakes shaped like horses, cushions with horses on, and so forth.  Next years theme will be the honey bee, so I imagine there will be lots of bee themed things.  This year, there was a bee frame set up, which was fun to watch.

There were also a number of flower and plant displays.

And of course, the handicrafts.  We saw all kinds of stuff, of varrying quality, from adults and kids. I only snapped a few examples - there were hundreds of items enterred into different categories...

Here's the winner of the decorated gourd category

and this one took first in one of the crochet categories, I think (though it might have been a wall display category) . 

Of course there were quilts, but one of my two criticisms of the fair was that most of the quilts were folded on the displays, with only a few hung over the back, so you couldn't really see them properly. (The other criticism is that instead of hanging or displaying all the entries in a category near each other, they didn't, so if you saw a painting that took 2nd place in the 12-14 watercolour section, it was really hard to find the first place and third place in the same competition. I really like to see what the whole range of entries in a given category was...)

There were also pressed flower arrangements ("pressed materials under glass"), which is a lovely, old-fashioned sort of thing to do - there weren't many entries in that category, but isn't this one great?

And there were bags - we all liked this selvage bag (but don't ask me which tote bag won first prize, because I have no idea - I didn't find it easily!)

There was even a section for "interlocking building bricks" - apparently, these entries had been built at the fair, in the presence of the judges, using no more than 150 pieces, in only an hour. They were pretty amazing considering that. But how cool is it to have a lego (I mean, "interlocking building brick") competition at the County Fair?  I think it's very cool.

We also all enjoyed this - this mosaic/collage was entirely made from ribbons won at fairs over the years - a woman made it for her grandmother's 90th? birthday using the ribbons the grandmother had won over years of enterring home arts competitions - sewing, cooking, canning and so on. Fantastic.

We didn't spent a lot of time looking at animals, though on the way out, we did take a trip into the bunny and chicken barns. I saw lots of great rabbits (including a couple the size of dogs - and I don't mean chihuahuas) but didn't take any photos. I did, however, take a couple of these fellas...

And what about the food, I hear you ask? Of course, one can't go to the County Fair without eating.

Just for a change, here's a photo of Sarah drinking outside!  All of my friends pointed out that it was supposed to be Olivia drinking, but she wasn't drinking at the time, so there wasn't much I could do... Sarah had a slushie from the stand you can see over her shoulder - you buy a cup and then you can fill your slushie with whatever flavours you want - she had several, but I can't remember what they were - it made a nice stripy effect in the cup, though...  I had a nice, fluorescent green sour apple sno-cone myself, but I don't have a photo of that - my friend Barbara took one, though, so perhaps she'll post it somewhere public!

We had funnel cakes, of course (though Olivia didn't manage to get one - I hope we can find one for her somewhere else on this trip!).

Finally, the girls (Olivia, Katy and Melina) decided that they just had to try what a deep-fried Oreo would be like - how could we resist?

Here they are...

Verdict?  Pretty much what you'd expect - tastes like a hot, slightly melty, Oreo, coated in batter.  Not a patch on the funnel cakes - or the fried dough, which we missed out on, on this occasion...  We only snacked a bit at the fair, as we decided to go out to dinner afterwards rather than eat dinner at the fair...