Worn Out

Whew! We got in at 1:30 or so in the morning. *yawn* I love going to the State Fair!

We got up there around 12:30 in the afternoon. We parked outside Gate 4, and when we walked past the race barns, we saw my parents' car. We went into the Hobbies, Arts & Crafts building first. We saw a gigantic pumpkin, looked at the produce, drooled over the cookies and cakes, and saw the quilts. Yippee! Then we went to the Dairy Building. The Butter Cow is actually doing something this year, instead of just posing.

Oh, and the Butter Cow has a live webcam!

If the people get out of the way, you can see some of the detail. There are butter kittens, butter mice, and butter flies this year in addition to the actual cow herself.

We walked down Main Street to the Coliseum, where we watched a few classes of the Society Horse Show. We walked through some of the horse barns. The Society snobs always rope off their barns, so we got stuck on the wrong side of the brick barns. Geez, at least let people have a way through, would you? We spent a long time in the Draft barns petting a baby draft mule and a baby Percheron. We doubled back to get some chocolate milk from the "Milk-a-Cow" stand. Mom's friend Dianne was working in there. One of the cattle farms had Jack Russell terrier puppies for sale in their barn. They were very naughty, but very cute little things. One of them had one blue eye and one brown eye. She bit. A lot! Then we got Dennis's first Elephant Ear ever, with a lemon shake-up. We took that over to the Grandstand, and watched a few harness races. We went over to the Piglet trailer, but there weren't any babies yet. :( Too early in the Fair.

We met my parents at the Illinois Building. We got some Honey Ice Cream, sat around, then went to the Ethnic Village to get Beth ready for dancing. We watched some well-bellied Belly Dancers while we were waiting. Dennis got some chicken curry from the Indian place that was too hot for me. I snuck out to get a corn dog :) Beth didn't feel like dancing all of the dances, and she was almost always in the back, so we couldn't see her too well. She was in the front for the Hornpipe, which is one of the dances I like to watch the most. We all sat together and tried to embarrass her by hooting and doing the wave, etc. After the dancing, we went to the Expo Building to get some Watkins Vanilla, and we actually managed to avoid all of the other crap in the building. The trick is to walk quickly and divert your eyes ;)

My family shared some fried cheese curds with us. Another thing Dennis had never tried before. We all walked back to the Draft barns, dragging Beth's dance suitcase through the muck. Dennis and I got bored with the standing around and talking to strangers, so we took off shortly after. My family walked out with us. We stopped in Litchfield on the way home to get something to drink and stretch our legs a little.

It was a good day at the fair!