Welcome to the 2016 Oklahoma State Fair!
(This blog will be mostly pictures. LOL)
I haven't spent a day (like a "get there when it opens and stay until it closes" day) at the fair since I was in grade school. I went a couple of times with my family but that tradition didn't last long. I remember the large building with all the shopping & free samples... don't remember which building it was but it used to be painted orange and had many colorful flags atop the roof. The only ride I remember is this big blue wavy slide. You rode down it in a potato sack. And I think we saw Disney on Ice one year. End of Erica's childhood fair memories.
A kid in 4H did their presentation on border collies...smart kid.
I went to the fair a handful of times with friends as an adult but we usually just went for an hour or so in the evening. There was nothing really exciting to see or do. Over the past few years, Wes & I have been going to the fair for dinner (because fried foods, duh!) Well, this year I decided to relive my childhood and spend an entire day at the great State Fair of Oklahoma! People love the fair and go multiple times while it's in town. There has to be a reason why. We cleared our schedules for a weekend and I looked up attractions to see & do and made an itinerary for the day.
Bottom right picture- a shack filled with turkey legs being smoked, aka heaven.
Turns out there is quite a lot to do and see at the fair (and all the shows & demonstrations are free!) so it's no surprise why people spend entire days at the fair but, for us, staying out all day is a bit too much. We had a fun day overall but we were there from 11am - 9pm. That's a 10 hour work day! I was overly ambitious. LOL Maybe next year, we'll only stay out about half that time. We actually did so much that I had to split this blog into two Mondays.
The first building we went into was Agtropolis in the Expo Hall. It was mainly geared toward kids but I think it was my favorite building. The building was full of farm animals! Piglets & tiny chicks (pictured above) and goats (pictured below)!
Agtropolis gave children the chance to learn about raising farm animals and sustainable environmental measures. The shopping in the building was all MIO (Made in Oklahoma) vendors. There were also a lot of educational demonstrations. We watched a beekeeper extract honey from a honeycomb and the booth with the alpacas taught us fun facts about their wool.
After I got my fill of adorable farm animals, we decided it was time for our first meal. The main highlight of the state fair is the food, after all. Everything is fried and skewered on a stick! Throughout the day, I had a jug of rootbeer, fried mashed potatoes (my favorite!), bacon wrapped corn on the cob, lemonade, salt water taffy and a piece of key lime pie dipped in chocolate. Good thing we also spent the entire day walking off the calories. Hahaha!
We spent most of the afternoon wandering around in the nicely air-conditioned buildings. There was so much shopping. Unfortunately, most of the vendors sold the same types of items so it wasn't as exciting as it could have been if there was more variety. Neither of us saw anything we couldn't live without so we didn't get any fair souvenirs. While we were walking from one building to another, we ran into the antique tractor parade. I guess if you can restore a classic car, you can restore an antique tractor.
Next came our favorite activity of the day- Zoppe Italian Family Circus.
Their tent is always the first thing I notice when I walk into the fair but we've always gone in the evening when it's closed so I never really knew what it was. I'm so so glad we went this year. Both Wes & I enjoyed their performance immensely. It was an old traditional circus, like with clowns, acrobats, jugglers and sword swallowers. The ringleader described it as "a real circus, not like the famous French Canadian show that just pretends to be a traditional circus."
Of course my favorite act of the circus was the performing dogs. The precious pups ran around in circles, jumped through hoops and over hurdles and danced on two legs. I tried taking pictures but didn't get very good ones. We sat up in the bleachers so we were a little far from the action.
That wrapped up the morning and early afternoon activities. The weather was pretty warm the weekend we went so we spent most of the afternoon in the buildings. Still no exciting shopping, though. *sadface* I almost bought a bamboo memory foam pillow but I didn't want to lug it around the rest of the day. Late afternoon and evening fair activities to come next week!!
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