The Great Minnesota Get-Together

It is time once again for us to perform our duty as good Minnesotans and make our annual pilgrimage to the Minnesota State Fair. My second ever post on this blog chronicled our trip of 2006 when Lindsey was 3 and Marissa was 1. What little peanuts!

We first visited some of the animal barns. After checking out huge sow and her nine piglets, some sheep and goats, Marissa and I managed to catch an event called pole bending in which horse riders weave through six poles without tipping any over. It was very exciting to watch but only for about 10 minutes, as that's when Marissa decided she wanted to move on to something else.



Each year a new fried food is unveiled at the fair. This year it was deep fried chocolate chip cookie dough. We didn't find the booth, and I'm not sure I would have tried it for fear of craving it during the other 353 days of the year when it's not available.

Add this to the list of other strange fair foods: A breakfast lollipop (sausage deep-fried in corn muffin batter, served with maple syrup), Minneapple pie (deep-fried apple pie), chocolate covered jalapenos and sweet corn ice cream. And of course my favorite to ponder but never to eat:

We tend to stick to the traditional fare:

Chocolate milk shake at the moo barn.

 

A blue raspberry sno-cone.

Then a trip to the kiddie midway, where my girls have spent hours in past years. Marissa happily skipped off with Wayne from ride to ride. Lindsey, on the other hand, wandered with me, looking for something she would find fun to do. Finally she said the words I have been dreading hearing:

"These are all kiddie rides, Mom."

My baby's growing up! Regardless, she managed to find one ride that she wanted to go on with me, kind of like the Tilt-a-Whirl. We got our car spinning so fast that she and I were laughing hysterically inside of it. The world was still spinning even when the ride was over, and Lindsey got a stomache ache from the spinning which ended her desire to go on anymore rides.

We had gotten there somewhat early in the day and watched the crowds increase as it warmed up and the day went on. Finally, around 3:00, after purchasing a stuffed horse on a stick for Lindsey and a pink cowgirl hat for Marissa, we declared our day complete and went home. Just in time, because the crowds were getting...well, crowded.

The Minnesota State Fair has the highest attendance of any fair of the 50 states. Last year 1.7 million people attended over the 12 days of the fair. The day before we visited 215,847 had attended - turns out over 223,000 were there the day we visited, a new record for that day. Despite this, we managed to run into my friend Laura and her family, who also blogged about her fair experience. Crazy that we ran into each other out of all the people there!