I love the fair. There is always a strange mix of people and smells, mostly bad food with some good food mixed in. There's 4H projects, dusty barns, 'the world's biggest/fastest/tallest/heaviest' something or other, strange people, stranger people, zealots, carnies, racing pigs, and Rastafarian bananas. The South Carolina Fair didn't really disappoint on any of these, although it was disappointingly small. It was about the size of the Dane County Fair, which means it was about 1/6th the size of the MN State Fair. It was about 1/2 midway and while we didn't go on any rides, it made for some pretty awesome people watching.
There were a couple of exhibit buildings that we wandered through. The "Agriculture and Fine Art" (yeah, odd mix to me too) was kind of fun. My favorite was the photography submissions, and we sort of skimmed over the other art - paintings, drawings and other. I never understand the agricultural section - what makes one apple 'blue ribbon' worthy over all of the other apples there? They look the same to me. The same question goes for the gourds, buckets of peanuts, pear, tomatoes, corn, beans, etc. Inside the building they had a giant, 8 ft tall bale of cotton. I wonder how many t-shirts you could make from that much cotton. And I wonder how many acres of planted cotton it would take to make that bale. We've seen cotton in the fields around here and it seems like there's not a lot on each plant.
Racing pigs! I had to take a picture of this between races, because it was 10 deep with people watching the piglets race. It reminds me of a time when Brian and I were kids in Colorado. We went to a rodeo and at a break in the rodeo the boys could chase a greased pig and girls could chase chickens. If you caught something it was yours to keep! I caught a sorry-looking chicken missing half it's feathers. When I proudly showed up in the stands with it Dad asked what I was going to do with it now. Um, huh. I hadn't thought that one through. We gave it to the people sitting behind us - they lived on a farm and I suppose they ate it.
Some of the highlights from the Midway. I LOVE the squid hat. And I also love the zoom lens on my camera so I can take pictures like this without people knowing! The "drop zone" ride, in mid-drop. We went on something similar Great America in Illinois, although I don't know that I'd trust one at a fair.
There were some crazy rides...I didn't think traveling fairs like this had such wild rides (there was even a huge roller coaster). And, of course I had to show proof of the Rastafarian banana...
My favorite part of any fair is the animal barns, of course. We wandered through the cows, chickens, and horses. After we'd been walking for a couple of hours we stopped at the arena and watched the horse events. This little girl was so darn cute! Her pony was about half the size of the other horses in her event and we were rooting for her.
Lastly, the goat showing. This was the judge...love the tie.
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