We realized recently that my 14 year old son has never been to the Fair (ours is the third largest in the entire country, so it is quite something to see). He went as a baby, but doesn’t remember it. We used to go every year. My husband’s family went religiously every year for an entire day each time. They would set up camp at a picnic area and spend the entire day from morning till it closed, seeing shows, going on rides, eating Fair food, and seeing the exhibits. I went a few times as a child then when I met my husband we began going together every year. I remember being there the summer I was pregnant with my daughter and desperately craving birch beer, yet that year they had none for sale! I also remember my son losing his favorite toy there as a baby.

It was time to get my son to the Fair, particularly once he heard they had deep-fried Koolaid, so we went last night.

We saw all the animals and a pig race. There was a sheep costume contest going on that we watched for a bit (the sheep were not excited about their costumes). We inspected the award-winning vegetables, the funny things for sale, and saw a wolf show (some day I will write a post about the wolves we have gone to see over the years). We played a few games, looked at the rides, but mostly wandered around and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Of course, we had to have some Fair food. First up, my daughter needed a donut dog. This is a hot dog placed on a donut instead of a roll. The donut is griddled slightly, but it’s really sticky on the outside. She enjoyed that (they also had a donut burger but we didn’t try that!). My son had a corn dog. I had a cheeseburger. They had birch beer so we got a big cup of that to share (you can buy it bottled in stores now once in a while, so it isn’t a once a year specialty like it used to be!).

Then it was time to consider the fried foods. Fried Koolaid was

required. It was also disappointing. I had seen a photo of it in a magazine and there it looked like balls of Koolaid. What we got were squiggles of batter that tasted faintly of fruit. We also got fried cheese curds, which sounded interesting, but looked like fried mozzarella sticks (they did taste like cheese curds). The hands down winner was the deep fried cookie dough, which was warm and gooey and pretty darn delicious.

Before we left, we had some ice cream, kettle corn, and sugar waffles. All in all it was a successful Fair outing!

We realized recently that my 14 year old son has never been to the Fair (ours is the third largest in the entire country, so it is quite something to see). He went as a baby, but doesn’t remember it. We used to go every year. My husband’s family went religiously every year for an entire … Read more →