"Our State Fair Is A Great State Fair"

As far as the weather goes, the last two days have been about as perfect as you can get. Yesterday was sunny and in the upper 70's.....today is more overcast and a nice breeze, still in the upper 70's. Wow. I could handle this all the time!

We had a great day yesterday for going to the State Fair. We stopped for breakfast in Marshall on the way down, and arrived just after the gates opened. We checked out the day's activities and our Fairgrounds map, then we started wandering.

We decided to check out the activity in the Coliseum, and found the cutting horse competition. For those unfamiliar with that term, you have two people, each on horseback, and they trade off “cutting” (separating) a calf from a small herd and guiding it into a different pen. For the competition, there were ten calves in each pen and each had a number on its back. When the timer started, the arena announcer told the first participant what number calf they had to find.....from there, they had to take the calves out in numeric order. If the wrong calf switched pens, the cutting team was disqualified. Pretty impressive! It really showed how the horse and the rider had to learn to work as a team.

From there, we decided to check out the pig races. We'd heard about it, and we'd seen it on TV. In person, though, it's pretty amazing how those little piggies race around the track! It may have something to do with a plate of fig newtons (or at least what the announcer said was fig newtons) on a tray at the finish line. The first pig got the whole item, the rest had to root for the crumbs. And root they did!

We enjoyed just wandering around, looking at different vendors and exhibits. We checked out the Commercial Building, the Varied Industries Building, and a few other buildings on our way from one side to the other of the fairgrounds to the other. We eventually found the Missouri Wine Tent and decided it was five o'clock somewhere! I enjoyed the Butterfly Blush from Jowler Creek Winery near Platte City, and hubby had some dry red wine from Meramec Winery near St. James. It was a nice break in the action!

We checked out the Fine Arts Building and some other things in that area. We decided against going through the Rabbit & Poultry Building – as hubby said, if he wants to see a rabbit, he'll just look out in the back yard! (And, indeed, one of the neighborhood bunnies spent quite a while in our back yard this afternoon!)

We parked ourselves on a bench underneath a shade tree near the south side of the Fairground and enjoyed our lunch. Thank goodness for small insulated lunch coolers! We checked out the Conservation Building and enjoyed checking out the fish from around the state. We meandered more and appreciated that we'd brought our own lunch when negotiating through the long line for the Beef House!

We decided to meander down the Carnival Midway. They were gearing up to open at noon. By the time we walked down and back, it was time for them to open. We stopped at one of the stands where you throw darts at balloons – last year, I killed at that! In fact, I ended up breaking four balloons with three darts. I won a small blue dog that had watched over my car from the dashboard for the past year. I tried again – actually ended up trying twice. The small prizes had changed this year, and I didn't see anything I wanted when I nailed the first three balloons. So I tried again – and that time I got to upgrade to a medium prize. There were pink and purple stuffed dogs, so now my blue dog has a (little bit larger) sister! Mom will think I've lost my mind!

We finished off our visit with the Mo-Ag Building and sharing some Tiger Stripe ice cream from Buck's Ice Cream (on the MU campus). It you haven't had any, I highly recommend it! We were pooped last night – of course, we did a Walmart stop on the way home, so I'm sure that is what wore us out!! We're already looking forward to next year.