How We Learned Today: A Day At The Fair

We spent the day at one of the local county fairs recently - one of our favorite summertime activities. There are two county fairs that are close enough to go to easily, even though our own county shut down its fair for good a few years back. One of the fairs is full of activities, animals, exhibits and entertainment, and the other one still has lots of things to see, but not nearly to the same level. So, our tradition has been to buy unlimited ride wristbands at the lighter fair because there's not as much to see, and then forego rides on the more robust fair, taking full advantage of the opportunity to experience everything that one has available (which is much more than we can do in one day, even without the rides).

The fair where we ride the rides happens first each summer, and this year we nearly missed it because June is just flying by. The unlimited ride wristbands are a good deal if you remember to buy them ahead of time, and the girls will often ride the same ride over and over and over again, so the wristbands pay for themselves within the first 20 minutes or so. It's also nice that the girls are a little older now, so they can split up and go in different directions to ride the rides they like, especially earlier in the day when it's still light outside and it is far less crowded. I felt a little sorry for K, though, because she wanted to ride so many rides and ended up doing a bunch by herself. Hopefully I remember next year to invite a friend for her so she has someone to ride with.

While I was waiting for them to finish a superman-style ride, I amused myself by taking a look at the control box the carnival worker stands at.

This very old-school control box has buttons to start and stop the ride (and for this particular ride, it has a vertical joystick that is not unlike the one on the Dumbo ride at Disneyland that makes your elephant go up and down). I assumed these rides were time-controlled, but I was surprised to see the carnival worker manually starting and stopping the ride and manually lowering the ride back down to the ground level by pushing the joystick down. This particular worker left the control box wide open when he walked away, but I guess he's not too worried about me pushing any buttons, even though they are all clearly labeled. At one other ride I noticed the worker close the lid of the box when he walked away, although he also left the control key still in the slot before he did so, just like the guy did on the ride above.

As I stared at the brilliant pink tone of the metal box and noticed how well it clashed with the bright orange panel on the front, I also noticed that not one but two power cords were dangling from the bottom of the box. One went to the ride, but where did the other one go? It turns out that it goes to a little 'foot-box' on the ground.

Inside that box is a foot pedal and the carnival worker has to stand there with his foot inside the box and press the pedal the entire time the ride is going. What would happen if he took his foot out? I didn't ask, but for the rest of the day I watched every worker at every ride stand there with their foot half-sticking out of the box. Maybe it's an emergency shut-off switch if he has to run out and help someone. Maybe it's just making sure that he's paying attention and not nodding off. Maybe it's a way for the owners to know that he's standing there and protecting that precious pink metal control box while the children are on the ride. If you ask someone at the carnival and find out, be sure to let me know!

C and K on the Viper. K went on to ride it many more times. C was done after that first one.

It was much louder in person, but if you listen carefully you can still hear the ride squeaking and creaking as it spins. K seems to like this kind of ride. She rode several more like it throughout the day and night.

The Gravitron (aka "Thriller"). They only rode it once this time. I don't think it's quite as fun without your teenage brother inside. Last time we were at the fair they rode this ride until C could hardly stand up. I don't think she ate anything for the rest of the day after that.

I wondered just how old these rides were anyway. These were the connectors on the third tier of the Zillerator, their only real roller-coaster. The pin looks rather new, though.

C and K on the Tornado, spinning themselves silly

A in a car by herself. You can see her arm holding onto the center circle. She held onto it the whole ride so her car wouldn't spin at all, after she refused to get in a car with her sisters.

The Giant Slide and their different techniques to try to finish first.

C and K on the Ferris Wheel

Way up there

My favorite was the closeup pictures of them arguing on the Ferris Wheel. Apparently, K thought C was swinging the seats, which was scaring her. C insists she wasn't. Ah, sisters....

They were fine again within minutes

C's favorite ride was the 'Aladdin one'. I don't even know what it's really called, but it's basically a huge platform that rotates on a big arm and yet stays right-side-up all the time. She rode it SO many times, you'd think I would have gotten a picture with her on eye level.

That's her with her hand up in the air on the left, waving at me.

But of course the fair isn't only about rides. There was much more to see while we were there! In fact, we were already drawn in by something by the time we'd walked 20 feet into the first building. There was a makeup booth on the left and they were offering glitter for $1 or a full makeover for $5. I was so excited for K to finally have the makeover she wanted! The ladies were so sweet, giving her a full pampering session complete with moisturizer, tinted lotion, eye shadow, glitter, mascara, blush and colored lip gloss. It was perfect!

Glitter only

The finished look

She was thrilled!

Next, we headed over to the textiles and artist area, which was right next door. I was so excited to find out that the quilting ladies had planned a scavenger hunt for the kids ("find a quilt with 6 dragons", "find a red bunny on a red circle", etc). We all went up and down every row looking for the quilts with rubber duckies, folded kimonos, and strawberries, and in the meantime I got to see and (briefly) enjoy every single one of them. Thank you to the brilliant person who thought of that!!

My favorite quilt

The photography, drawing and painting area was a little easier for me to see because it's right next door to the jungle animal area. K ran off immediately and later returned to retrieve C. A stuck it out with me for most of the time and we enjoyed the truly weird and wonderful works of art there before joining the other two in the jungle animal area. It doesn't change much from year to year, but it's cool enough to see again and again. I guess my girls really are spoiled when seeing a 10 foot constrictor, holding a scorpion and a hedgehog, and watching a spider monkey crawl all over the guy next to you are 'been-there, done-that' moments. The group did add an alligator to the exhibit, though. And a pair of kookaburras.

We walked through the rest of the exhibit rooms, too - ogling the desserts, marveling at the creativity of the exhibitors, "aww"ing at the close-up photos of animals, and having plenty of "I could do that" moments, followed by "let's do that" moments. Dragons made out of twisted tin foil? A duct tape jacket? A S'mores Chocolate Cake with marshmallow creme layers and caramelized marshmallows on top? A huge castle made of painted cardboard pieces? An adorable pink fleece bathrobe in A's size? Ya, we could totally do all those!

This Minecraft Lego structure caught the girls' eyes

The cake A wants me to make for her birthday. I'm not so sure about this.

We watched the 4-H kids wrangle sheep and pigs, listened to some good (and some not-so-good) musicians playing on the stages outside, attempted to guess the weight of a steer in a 4-H raffle, and ate some slices of cake for their fundraiser. And then sometime in the early evening I actually pulled out my fair schedule and saw that there was supposed to be a Chinese acrobat/gymnastics show at 7pm. I set the alarm on my phone, making sure to leave enough time to get back there from the ride area we seemed to keep ending up at. We got there a little early and saw a dance performance by a studio in San Francisco. I think someone might want to tell them that having three teenage boys clogging/tap dancing to "Bad Boys" (the theme song from COPS) while wearing police outfits is not necessarily good advertising for their studio.

But when all the parents of the dancing kids got up and left, we got front row seats for the acrobat show. It was amazing! The kids were stunned and loved every single second of it. I was really glad we didn't miss this one.

My timing was off, but this was four rings stacked on top of each other (you can see the other guy standing there holding the rings). They jumped off the stage only, with no springboards or anything. It was crazy!

Pretty good jump-roping. This was the only video I got, but at one point they had 4 ropes going at once and they were flipping and rolling around all over the place!

Balancing only on their shoulders and necks alone.

I giggle every time I hear the girls' commentary in this video.

Higher

And higher

And crazier

that was amazing!

the whole crew

And of course, no trip to the county fair would be complete without a hundred trips to the petting zoo. C took so many pictures I could make a coffee table book out of them. I'll post a few of my favorites, but if any of you are thinking about drawing a duck sometime, I've got photos of their heads and bodies from dozens of angles here for you. ;)

One of the wallabies in his (or her) "pouch"

Some very fuzzy baby goat/sheep-type animal that the girls would be very upset if I left out. The thing deserves a little credit too as his head was dragged up while he was still asleep so they could get a picture of the thing.

The duck that looks a lot like Hersheys (the duck C owned when we fostered ducklings last year)

the duck saying "Quit taking my picture already, kid!"

One of the two deer, which are a huge hit with the kids, and a huge pain for the petting zoo owners. For those who don't know, deer are ridiculously aggressive and obnoxiously persistent, and their deer spend quite a bit of their day in 'time out'. You think goats like to chew on everything and headbutt you in a petting zoo? Just wait till you see a deer!