How to effectively "do" the state fair

Friday night, Darrell and I picked my sister, Julie, up from the airport at around 7:30.  My friend Kira came with us, too.

We went immediately to the State Fair, since Julie wanted something exciting to do and we wanted to go to the fair.

Now, the State Fairgrounds are not in the best of neighborhoods.  And parking is at a premium.  But, if you promise not to let everyone else know, I'll let you in on a little secret.  You can park at the State Capital building and ride a tour bus to the entrance.  For free.  Yep.  Park for free.  Ride for free.

Plus, since you are riding a tour bus, you can pretend you are a Country Music Hall of Fame Star that is arriving at the State Fair to perform.  Or you don't have to.  I'm just telling you how "I" do things fair-related.

Now, if you aren't the actual musical act performing at the fair, you may just want to wander over to the Coliseum to see who IS performing.  Sometimes, it is a former-Disney star.  Sometimes, it's the late-80s hip-hop ensemble (which this year included Young M.C.).  Sometimes, it's Alice Cooper (which, by the way, is the band I've seen in concert more than any other.  I.KNOW!  Unbelievable, isn't it?). 

And sometimes, it's Bret Michaels.  We got there in time to hear the last 3 songs.  Only 2 of which I had heard before to my knowledge.  He put on a pretty good show for the last 3 songs.

We left the Coliseum and stood outside for a few minutes, soaking up the atmosphere.  Including a 70-ish year old woman who thought she was 18.  She had a great figure, but she was 70-something.  She wore tight lowrider jeans with rhinestone accents on the pockets.  She had a shirt that was a few inches too short and showed off her abs.  About 4 inches of abs.  That were tanned.  About the color of a brown crayola.  I couldn't take a picture (I need to practice my stealth-mode photo-taking skills--any teachers?), but suffice it to say that I think she thought she could get a date with Bret Michaels.

We next ventured to the food.  Oh....the food!  I had a corn dog and funnel cake.  Julie had a Navajo taco.  Kira had a corn dog and mini doughnuts.  And Darrell had nothing.  (Party pooper or smart man?  You decide.)

We then went to judge the youth livestock.  Not really.  We just went to look at it.  But, since it was 9 o'clock, "the man" told us to vacate the livestock area.  We saw a few goats, a couple of pigs, and that was pretty much it.  Really kind of sad.  So, if you want to see animals, remember to go earlier in the day.

We then found our way to the textile arts.  We decided that the judges must be super kind or really stupid.  The handiworks that looked the worst were the ones that won blue ribbons.  The ones that looked like real talent was involved received honorable mentions, at best.

Some of our favorites were the John Deere tractors Christmas ornaments:

This one makes the cut since Julie's former roommate, Trena, has a collection since she and her husband are farmers.

The plastic canvas Nativity scene:

 This one is featured since my Mom collects Nativity sets and plastic canvas is tacky.  (Although I don't want to have this particular scene and don't like plastic canvas, this was done really well and looked good for the medium chosen.  Hence, the lack of a ribbon of any kind.)

We got kicked out of the textile display and saw something that was really exciting:

Yeah.  That really is an artificially intelligent electronic computer module installed in a highly advanced, very mobile, robotic automobile: KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) aka a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am.  If you'd like, you can have my autograph since I saw such a technological wonder with my own two eyes.

Since we weren't going to ride the rides (because, really, they are sort of have pop-up-book assembly), we decided it was time to head home.  We boarded the bus, traveled to our car, and headed home.

I can't speak for any of the others, but I will say that a good time was had by all!

And that, my friends, is how to "do" the state fair.