Corn Dogs, Beef Jerky And a Sprinkle of Rain

Grandma Deb, the boys, and I headed to the county fair last week. Before we left, a few ground rules had to be set for our little adventure to assure everyone was on the same page when we arrived. And yes, we’ll get some yummy beef jerky and pickles like we do every time.

1. The rides do not open until 3pm.
2. We will see a few shows, walk through the exhibit halls, and window shop at booths before going to the ride because we have time to kill.
3. The rides do not open until 3pm.
4. No matter how excited you are, you will not run! But you can skip, jump, jog, or walk along side us or in front of us.
5. And again, the rides do not open until 3pm!!

The boys enjoyed the rides so much last year that we decided to try out a wristband night this year. Thankfully, wristband night also landed on free admission night thanks to a Wendy’s promotion where every receipt equaled one free admission. In addition to the free admission night, if you brought a bottle of Dr. Pepper you would receive a $5 wristband discount. And if that wasn’t enough, all carnival games were supposed to be $1 although a lot of games had signs up stating they weren’t participating in the discount programs. Unfortunately for the boys, their favorite game where they won a fish and fish tank in the past was not participating in the $1 games so we opted to skip the game since we have a 10 gallon tank and were only looking for a few new friends. And we still hadn’t found the beef jerky stand, though.

While we were there, I thought it would be interesting to walk through the artwork competitions and see if the boys had any interest in partaking next year. They were intrigued by the project boards because they had the word hypothesis (a word they recently learned and now use to talk about everything), the decorated rock (a new category), and the various collections. They have a lot of great ideas and are excited to enter next year. We also watched a show called Wild About Monkeys just for Drama King. He’s had a thing for monkeys for a while so this show was amazing for him. We’re still keeping an eye out for the jumbo pickle vendor. And why are we still without beef jerky?

Of course, no trip to our county fair is complete without stopping by Farmer John’s farm to help with chores, play in the oversize building block area, sift through sand to discover a gem, and watch the model trains run around the small-scale village. Another stop on our to do list was the Power From the Past exhibit so the boys could make a rope and play with the antique telephones. The rest of the evening was spent hopping between rides and avoiding the rainfall. It was obvious that water falling from the sky appears to scare most of the people who live here as when it started to rain, most people scrambled for cover either under umbrellas, under overhangs, or inside the closest exhibit hall.

We took a break from the rain for a while about midway through the day. Little T ate a corn dog, Drama King ate some beef jerky and we all watched a few demonstrations, one for a peeler that you could use with any finger and one for the Shammy. Both demonstrations were highly entertaining and the boys watched with intent but easily walked away when it was over. Towards the end of the night, it was raining so hard that it got uncomfortable. The boys made one last trip up and down the pirate obstacle course and then once around the merry-go-round before we gave in to the weather and called it a night.