State Fair

I decided on Friday that a family cultural experience was worth pulling the kids out of school and going to. So we packed everyone up on Friday morning and met my parents so we could all go to the state fair together. In all the years I have lived here, I've never gone but with our exchange student here I thought it would be a great opportunity. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. I loved seeing the steers all cleaned up and coats fluffed for being judged. You'd never think a cow could look so handsome, but they were beautiful. We were interested to see what people do to their animals to present them for judging. All of the animals get a shampoo and bath. The steers had their tail tips fluffy and curly. The sheep were sheared to take off as much wool as possible. Mom and I got to touch one that was being sheared and it was like touching a fine carpet. The dairy cows and goats were shorn practically down to the skin. The barns were all kept pretty clean and there wasn't the usual overwhelming odor of Farm around (which I don't mind, but my children go around holding their noses). We enjoyed seeing pigs (including a sow and her piglets), sheep, goats, steers, dairy cows, rabbits of all fluffinesses and sizes, and poultry. I've never seen geese with blue eyes, or enormous beach ball-size black chickens. We wandered through the 4-H exhibits and I wished I had time to get my kids involved in that. One of my favorite and most interesting things to see was a live bee colony and a man who kept bees as a hobby. We talked with him for quite a while. Another of our favorite things was a tiger show. There was a tiger troupe all the way from Florida which featured four different kinds of Bengal tigers from India. They were all captive-bred animals and just incredible in size and colors. The MC explained that there are actually four colors of Bengal tiger that occur naturally: the usual orange with black stripes, white with black stripes, and then two colors more rare: white with light tan stripes (the previously-thought mythical "white tigers") and one that was orange with reddish-brown stripes.

We enjoyed the sights, and I also decided to splurge just a bit. We actually bought food at the fair. Phew. That was a pinch on the pocketbook. Next time we go (if we ever go back) we will brown-bag it for sure. The other splurge was the rides. I had promised the kids we would each get to choose one ride...until we found out that each ticket was $1, and most rides were 3 or 4 tickets each to ride. L. was begging to go on the ferris wheel, so E., B., L, and I chose that one. What a fast $16! O. decided he would rather take his $4 and walk around to see if there was anything that caught his eye. When we met up again he had decided there just wasn't anything he wanted badly enough to spend a whole $4 on, so he gave me my money back.

We left with the kids wanting to stay and see more (which is a good feeling to leave on) because I had to get back to do a group music lesson with my piano students. We got a little turned around trying to get back to the freeway and enjoyed a brief (thankfully) tour of some west-side neighborhoods before managing to find our way to our road. I think next year we will just stick with the county fair because even if we have to pay for parking, it's free to get in, it's much closer, and maybe the rides won't be as expensive. I'll get my camera and post some tiger pictures tomorrow.