It's that time of year again! The MN State Fair is in full swing. You can find pretty much anything on a stick and pretty much everything is fried. The State Fair marks the final visages of summer where kids desperately wish for just a few more days before school starts.
In case you haven't heard, the MN State Fair is kind-of-a big deal. MN has been puttin' this thing on since 1859. It's the type of event where people will attend it every year of their life and every year of their life they SWEAR they are going to try new food and then end up never doing so. Like me.
My routine at the fair is as simple as the food i'm going to eat. Like Fresh French Fries! for example. I don't care if i can get them at a restaurant everyday, or make them myself (ha!), it just plain tastes better at the State Fair. Even more importantly, the fries have to be from the RIGHT stand. Oh yes, there most certainly are multiple fry stands. For example, the picture you see above? I don't get my fries from there. Nope! I have to go to the building by the Midway, that has the yellow sign, with black letters. THOSE are the fries i get. I'm sure the ones in the picture above are good, but the whole point of the Fair is to get THAT specific about where to get the common food.
One of my favorite places to go as a kid was the all-you-can-drink milk barn. At that time it only cost a nickle (or was it a quarter?) to drink as much milk in one visit as possible. One of the things i discovered later in life is that getting a BUCKET of Sweet Martha's Cookies to take to the all-you-can-drink milk barn makes the milk taste even better!! I don't go there unless we are with friends though. My husband is lactose intolerant and therefore seems uninterested in going to this stand. Not sure why...
Of course there are animals at the State Fair. It wouldn't be a fair without them. Visiting the animal barns is definitely something to strategically plan into the fair visit. I find the earlier we go, the better. Hundreds of people go through these places and walk where the animals walk, so you can imagine over the course of the day what that must be like. Not to mention the later in the day it gets, the hotter it gets. I don't take food into these places. In some barns you aren't allowed to. Makes sense right? Well, apparently the 10-year-old girl with a huge, melty twist cone didn't get that message in the cow barn where it expressly says "no food".
I should pause here for a moment. The State Fair is THE place to go if you want to people watch; simply because everyone goes to the Fair. Everyone.
Okay, so back to the animal barn. We hit up the Sheep Barn first. They have sheep that have woolly coats and they have sheep with no coats. I should point out that these animals aren't here to just look at by fair goers. Nope, these animals come from farms all over MN and are shown at the State Fair. So you have the typical shows like dog shows and cat shows, but at the Fair we have farm animal shows. I myself have never watched one but that's because the stands are oober packed with watchers already and i would have NO idea what is being judged.
One bit of advice, if you can leave your kids in the stroller in the animal barns, the better off you may be. It's either get poo on their shoes or on the stroller wheels. I'm not sure which is best. I do know that i don't want my 2.5 year old who loves to pick up rocks, trying to pick up a rock in these barns...
Don't worry, i have many more pics that i'll be posting. Until next time!
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