State Fair (on a stick)

It is a stormy night, but today was a beautiful day to spend at the Iowa State Fair! The fair is insanely crowded on weekends, so we took a day off to go see it. We went bright and early this morning to the fairgrounds on the East side of Des Moines. Every vacant lot, front yard, side yard, and back yard for many blocks around the fairgrounds was already transformed into a parking lot. Once inside the fairgrounds, we were immediately struck by not knowing where to start. The State Fair is absolutely enormous. There really is no way to see everything in a day. It was "Older Iowans" day, so there were even more antique tractors than usual, hundreds of beautifully restored John Deeres, Farmalls, and Olivers. Since moving to Iowa, I have come to be really interested in old tractors, so I dragged Sarah and Asher around to look at lots of them.

Asher loves tractors, but he really prefers the brand-new ones for sale, especially any tractor he can sit on or climb into the cab. He and I found plenty of sweet tractors to "test out"

Of course, there were plenty of animals to see.

At any State Fair, one of the most important decisions you have to make is what to eat. The Iowa State Fair is a cornucopia of things to eat, most very good, some very bad, mostly deep fried, and mostly on a stick. You can get meatballs on a stick, fried cheese on a stick, fried twinkies on a stick, and fried breaded bratwurst on a stick. If that sounds a little too greasy, they even have salad on a stick! We took it easy on the fair food, but we did eat a footlong corndog, a funnel cake, and a bowl of crawfish ettoufee (delicious cajun soup over rice).

We also watched a Bob the Builder "performance", met Clifford the Big Red Dog, went on the tunnel of love, and watched the Budweiser clydesdales. Of course, we saw the famous butter cow, a life-sized cow carved out of butter. This year, there is also a butter Shawn Johnson (the olympic gymnast from West Des Moines) and a few butter images of great Iowans of the past, like George Washington Carver. They have one really cool building that is filled with pregnant farm animals of all kinds. As the fair goes on, each of them give birth, and people can gather around and watch. Afterwards, you can see the babies, and watch replays of the births on flat panels above the pens. They even have a sterile but see-through operating tent in the middle of the room, and at certain times each day you can watch vets spaying dogs that you can adopt from the shelter. We missed seeing that one live! There is a lot to see at the fair. As I mentioned before, we will be going back on Sunday night, to see Garrison Keillor at the grandstand.

This was our second experience with the Iowa State Fair. The first time was last year, our second day in Iowa, after loading all of our possessions into a storage unit and returning the moving truck. We were living in a hotel room. The fair seemed like an odd thing, like an unusual event you might stumble upon on vacation. This time, it just felt like Iowa.

I must mention that I am a total Olympics addict at this point. It has made for a series of late nights, since the really good live events don't seem to get rolling until after 10 our time. I am watching the men's gymnastics individual all-around right now, watching a Japanese gymnast falling off the rings over and over again in high def. I really should get to bed. It feels like a Saturday, since we were at the fair all day, but it really isn't.