It's the Fair!! ~ Day 8

Today was a shorter day at the Fair. Rob and I are both a bit behind on our sleep. At about 3:00pm, after realizing we were jealous of the goats in the Goat Barn who were snuggled up and napping, we decided to call it a day and head home. We need to be onsite by 9:30am tomorrow so we figured a decent night's sleep was the mature decision. Darn it. Nevertheless, we still managed to pack in a good amount of fun in just a few hours today.

You say yam, I say sweet potato A friend gave me a head's up about a 4-H event this morning. We hustled and got to the exhibition hall in time to see an array of 4-H kids studying an array of produce. Vegetables to be exact. An annual 4-H competition that had somehow missed my radar, today was the "4-H Vegetable ID Contest." It was underway when we arrived. Pam (the friend) was kind enough to give me a briefing.

Kids of all ages and from any 4-H discipline were encouraged to participate. The goal was to correctly identify about 20 different vegetables, about 5 different seeds, and to rank order several collections of fruits from best to worst in terms of quality and condition. The more specific you could be, the better. For instance, item #1 was a Granny Smith apple. Noting it was an apple was correct. Noting it was a Granny Smith would break a tie. Noting it was not a vegetable and therefore shouldn't be in the contest would peg you as a smarty pants.  Guess it was best I wasn't in 4-H as a kid after all.

I perused the items and commented to Pam that didn't see anything terribly exotic. No jicama, no bok choy, no durian. She whispered that #15 (a mango) was tripping up a lot of the kids. And #5 was tricky (a yam or a sweet potato...it was the white one, not the orange one...which is a...yam?). She said her daughter was very excited to see #11, as Pam had been quizzing her in grocery stores on zucchini identification for several weeks. Sierra was apparently relieved to learn spelling didn't count.

And this is how you get to at least 30.  While lurking around the Goat Barn we ran into Natalie, a poised, eloquent, fun 16-year-old who is quite an accomplished goater. We have been friends with her family for several years and always enjoy catching up with them during the Fair.

Natalie showed us their goat pen and chatted about some of the behind-the-scenes drama for the 4-H competitions. She and her brother had both done well but she was surprised she did better in Dairy than in her preferred Pygmy. She introduced us to Gizmo, an admittedly hearty (i.e. fat) pygmy goat that is the newest addition to their herd. I asked Natalie how many goats in total they had now.

"I don't know. At least 30. But we've picked up five more [including Gizmo] since we've been here at the Fair." I asked her if it was typical to leave the Fair with more goats than you came with.

"It shouldn't be."

Apparently this has happened to the family before.

It was better than the Demo Derby, but that wasn't hard Out of curiosity, we decided to check out the Tuff Truck show in the Grandstands. The promoter is the same that failed miserably in last night's demolition derby. Two for two?

Actually, they did a much better job today. Although there were fewer entries than last year, the track was a bit longer. A number of the trucks had good rides up and down the hills and through the big puddle. Several lost their bumpers and popped tires. Nobody rolled over but there were enough that caught some air to make it entertaining. I did notice that Jeep SUVs seemed to provide the most fun, as they seemed to be exactly the right length to smash their front ends on the three consecutive hills. I was also proud of my sleepy self for discerning that the truck with the Confederate flag was going to be a bit of a rebel and provide some good photo ops.

It was a good pace My walking mileage today was 1.51 miles. We were at the Fair for about four hours so that seems about right.

The short visit also resulted in a short Fair Food Parade. We got our hands stamped in case we want to go back for dinner. But with Rob still snoring on the couch, I am guessing we are staying put tonight.

A Falafel Wrap from the new Food 4 You booth.  It was very tasty despite having healthy ingredients like organic hummus (huh?), feta, cucumbers, and greens.

A Sprite as I wonder why I am eating something healthy at the Fair.  But, in my defense, I never would have ordered falafel (the southwest wrap was much more up my alley) so it WAS a departure from my normal diet in some far fetched way.  But hey, that's a full fledged Sprite there!  No aspartame this week, baby!

A surprisingly good chocolate covered banana from the vendor with the disappointing chocolate covered strawberries.  I wanted some fruit doctored up to be unhealthy.  This hit the spot.