State (Fair) Claim To Fame

Husband and I went last night to the New York State Fair. Actually, I think they call it the Great New York State Fair but qualifiers aside, it was huge.

This was the first fair outside of Alaska I'd ever been to. I guess I wasn't sure what to expect but my memories of Alaska's fair are, for the most part, pleasurable. Wait, let me take that back. In Alaska, during the fair, it rains. It's called "fair weather" (God, I love that pun!) and you need to pack a rain jacket because there aren't enough shelters to keep you dry from the downpour. Last night the weather was beautiful with a steady breeze that wasn't too cold. It did become cloudy at one point with what looked like storm clouds but the rain did hold off. Point: New York.

The fair was huge -- there was so much to take in, that my senses were on overload. In fact, the first thing you see when you walk in the gates is a table with loads of green tags. It's for lost kids. You fill out the tag and attach it to your kid. Not having children, we didn't look too closely at this but I have to say, on the surface it doesn't seem like a bad idea.

What also surprised me was the amount of beer and wine being sold -- more than you'd expect at a family type event. We bypassed the alchohol though, tempted I was though to have a beer. The wine exhibit was right next door to the state trooper deomonstration on the wisdom and necessity of wearing seat belts. My husband is a stickler for this so we bypassed this too.

On our list of things to see were the Butter People we'd heard about. Alaska has giant cabbages as its claim to fame. Go to Palmer, Alaska and see 100 pound cabbages! New York State brags about its dairy and to prove the point, create life size figures out of butter. The Butter people are kept in a refrigerated room and it's pretty impressive for sculpture that's made out of butter. However, at least when you grow cabbages you can use the cabbage for some other use, like compost. What in the world are you going to do with all that butter? So yes,it's impressive, but I'd also have to put it in the "Get A Life" category.

It was the rides we were after and we finally found them after walking around, trying to orient ourselves. There were many rides including two types of ferris wheels (I hate those!) and kiddie rides. We went on the Swings (whee!), Cliff Hanger (we pretended we were Superman like everybody else does) and the Round Up. Husband went on Bumper Cars and something called Top Spin which you couldn't pay me to go on and I went on the Pirate Ship thing. Yes, that's kind of tame but I do love roller coasters, I just don't like scary looking rides at state fairs. Go figure.

The real fun came in trying to remember where we had parked. It turns out the Orange Lot is HUGE and you must remember your shuttle stop. Well, and I admit this was my fault, I didn't look closely at any kind of landmark and I didn't notice any sort of identifying notice so we ended up doing a lot more walking than we needed to (but in my mind that was okay, because I had an ice cream cone) but we finally did find the car.