YAY FAIR!! ~ Day 4

Weekdays are always quieter at the Fair. Then as evening approaches, the crowd thickens. I assume that is because people are getting off of work and also coming to go to the Grandstand event or a concert at the Amphitheater. This is one of the things I love about going to the Fair everyday, noticing the patterns and subtle changes from day to day.

We can often tell how crowded the Fair is by where we park. Today we arrived at about 12:30pm and parked closer to the Green Gate than we have in a long time. Sure enough, the crowd today was pretty light. We saw a number of people we knew -- but they were all people who are there every day, too. It was a day of Fair Regulars. And we are Fair Regulars. Whoo hoo!

Some highlights:

New food finds! I finally had a chance to try the new Hawaiian food booth in the Food Court. Although it was a little more pricey than similar food in other booths, it was worth the extra couple of bucks. In addition to the yakisoba noodles having more veggies and the teriyaki chicken being so good that even Rob liked it, I liked this new place because of the experience.

The crew working the counter were all very professional and friendly and seemed to genuinely appreciate their customers. Just a few extra words here and there, a sincere smile, and a few extra years of experience on the planet all made a difference. As much as I understand and appreciate the effort to give teens work experience at food booths, it was really refreshing today to be served by adults who knew what they were doing and why they were doing it.

Another culinary discovery today was another treat from the Deep Fried Heaven Truck. Although I have had deep fried chocolate chip cookie dough in the past, the version today blew me away. It was SO DANG GOOD!!! I "mmm'ed" all through the delicacy and ended up covered in chocolate sauce and powdered sugar, partially because of the wind but mostly because of my enthusiastic devouring of the Deep Fried Lump of Heaven. I thought the Deep Fried Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was good; this was even better. Best. Fair. EVER!

Wine Slurpee Confessional In the interest of free samples, we finally stopped at a booth selling kits to make wine slushies. We really only intended to sample the one flavor offered and move along. But before we knew it, we were confidants of the guy running the booth, learning all about his years as a missionary and time spent in Europe and the troubled life of his business partner and the challenges of being a fair and expo concessionaire. It was a bit odd and a whole lot unexpected. My best guess is that we were the first people to stop at his booth all day and he was relieved to have someone to chat with. At least I hope that's the explanation.

"Oh, wow, that's awful.  I'm so sorry to hear that."

Better rodeo than last year Today was Barrel Racing and Roughstock Rodeo Day in the Grandstands. The barrel racing was a nice way to spend some time relaxing in the shade. The highlight was a 10-year-old girl who competed. She was at least 8 years younger than any other racers and had one of the better runs. But I'm sure what is making tonight interesting at her house is that her mom was one of the other racers...and the girl beat Mom's time by about 1.5 seconds. That's quite a walloping based on the scores I saw today.

The Roughstock Rodeo tonight was well attended and was very well run this year. There was a good flow to the events and there was very little downtime. But what we and our friends were particularly pleased about was that the animals were better handled this year. Last year, the wranglers and rodeo clowns seemed really aggressive with the animals and used their ropes liberally, often dragging the bulls or horses to the exit. This year, there was a lot more finesse and a lot less dragging. Yee haw to that!

The juggler is hysterical! Like a lot of fairs, there are a number of entertainers who roam about our Fairgrounds dressed in costume and interact with guests. One of them is a juggler named Rhys. He wanders on stilts but a couple of times every day, he has a juggling show. We saw it today. He is a riot!

Rhys's show is one of those in which the humor is on a couple of different levels, sort of like a really good Pixar movie. Kids and adults both get to laugh. Really laugh. And Rhys is great with kids. He is like that really cool uncle that talks to you like an adult but also acts like a kid himself. Although Rhys didn't share anything about his personal life, I am pretty sure he is always at the kids' table at Thanksgiving -- partly but not entirely by demand of the kids.

Beyond the humor, though, the show was very entertaining. Rhys is an excellent juggler. I can say this with some authority, having spent an entire summer in junior high trying to teach myself how to juggle three bean bags. Mention that summer to my parents and they both groan with memories of me learning the hard way how not to deal with intense frustration. So Rhys's ability to juggle up to five items, sometimes of the very sharp or flaming variety, was very impressive. As was his ability to navigate intense sunlight at just the wrong angle and a pesky crosswind. Wind and juggling don't really mix.

And that brings us to today's Fair Food Feast Parade. I think I may have made up a little for yesterday's meager showing. Today's walking mileage was 3.41 miles on the pedometer. Tums count = 1. Pepto count = 0. Zit count = holding steady at 2.

First Dairy Women milkshake of the year and it was a winner.  Chocolate strawberry -- YUM!

The teriyaki chicken was so tasty, I didn't need the side of chili sauce after all.  I still doctored up the yakisoba noodles with Sriracha sauce, though.

Strolling through the Food Court aka My Home Away From Home with a frozen pink lemonade.  Very refreshing.

Free sample of a sangria wine slushy.  It was better than I was expecting.

O.M.G.  Deep fried chocolate chip cookie dough.  Best Fair treat so far.  It was an ooey gooey mess.

Once again Nerd Ropes are nowhere to be found at the Fair.  Boo!  So instead, I bought some Bottle Caps.  It has apparently been a long time since I have purchased Bottle Caps because I had no idea they are so small now.  I was not impressed with this change.  Happily, the candy still tasted as artificial as ever.

Free sample of frozen strawberry lemonade.  I didn't like it as much as the pink lemonade.  Why?  Ready for this?  It was too sweet.

This might be one of my most favorite Fair Food pictures ever.

We closed down the Fair and I was still hungry.  Luckily, there was one vendor open who had two corn dogs left.  Much to my surprise, the corn dog (from the Lions booth) was really good!  That's saying something since there's no telling how long it had been sitting there in the warmer.