Saturday morning, Melba and I got up early to go check out The Great Minnesota Get Together (a.k.a. the State Fair). We did the smart thing and hit the free parking/free shuttle deal:
Melba likes the back of the bus. We arrived at about 10am, and found ourselves at the horticulture building (or as Melba calls it, the agriculture building).
But before we made any reckless moves, we needed breakfast. A stop at The Peg looked like a good idea.
I was stupid and got the #2. It was so mediocre, I won't even post the picture here. Melba, however, was smart and ordered "The Famous Peg Muffin", based solely on the fact that the word "famous" preceded it on the menu. Word to the wise - order whatever is "famous".
That was a kickass sammy.
Well-fed and ready to go, we attacked the horticulture.
250 year old bonsai tree. Pretty cool, no? Not so fast, spring chickie:
This badboy is 300 years old. The apple mafia had a large contingent at the fair, and I was mighty thirsty from my mega-salty breakfast sausage. A $1 cup 'o apple cider hit the spot.
Melba swears that Honeycrisp apples are the bestest everest, but sadly they are not yet in season and none were available for purchase - despite the fact that there were 12 on display. Suspicious.
Onward to the giant produce. Most of the room was closed off for "judging", but we were able to check out the award winning pumpkin: 813.5 pounds. Solid work, Mr. Foss.
We then decided we wanted to take a ride and scope out the lay of the land - get an overview and plot the areas we wanted to see close up. The skyride provided just such an opportunity.
This was the first thing to catch my eye - a rather large building dedicated to COOKIES:
The crowds were starting to pick up.
Near the skyride exit, we spotted the free spam sample truck. Melba claimed to have never tried spam before, so I forced her to partake - all in the name of blog entertainment.
I'm a fan of sarsaparilla, even though I don't really know what it is. I like root beer, and sarsaparilla is more or less just root beer with something else added in, I suspect.
Good stuff:
Onward to those cookies I spotted. This place was a full-on cookie factory. They were pulling dozens and dozens of sheets full of cookies out of the huge floor to ceiling ovens continuously as I watched. I suspect part of the reason why they sell so damn many is because you can't just buy ONE cookie - they only come in a cone (about 15 cookies) or a bucket (about 4,377 cookies). Everywhere you walk, you see people carrying cookie buckets from this place.
But the cookies were good. Melba wimped out on me and only ate two, leaving me 13 to eat by myself.
This is what was left in the cone, after we'd eaten about 6 already:
Near the cookie factory was a BBQ joint that featured a rather unappealing sign on display:
Here's another shot of the cookie factory (note the buckets suspended):
After the spam and the cookies it was finally past noon, so a beer was in order. Leinenkugels Honey Weiss:
Melba eagerly anticipating her bier:
Ahh... the first delicious sip:
Cheers!
I was still suffering intestinal distress from all the cookies, otherwise I would have tried the pizza on a stick (they looked really good):
Melba got all in a tizzy about the pickle dogs. As the sign describes, a pickle dog is pastrami and cream cheese wrapped around a pickle spear.
This place also featured kool aid on tap. Dig that.
Pickle dogs being prepped:
Melba diggin' into the pickle dog:
We then headed over toward some of the livestock buildings, when a sign advertising "Alpacas" caught Melba's eye. Sure enough, two alpacas were on display. Sorta tough to get an idea of scale on these guys - they're like a half-scale llama.
Right next door was a baby buffalo:
We then met up with my very good friend J Dog and her boyfriend, Rod Carew:
The four of us wandered into the cattle building, where we were delighted to witness the milking area:
And the rows upon rows of reclining cattle. Thrilling stuff.
Next up, the Swine Barn.
J Dog immediately swooped on the free pig ears:
The swine barn also featured some sheep, this one being given a shearing:
Next door to the shearing was a contest of some sort that featured kids walking naked sheep around a pen. never did find out what was being judged or contested, nor did I really care.
The largest boar:
"Corn Dog" weighed in at a lofty 1040 pounds. Bacon is good. Pork chops are good.
Since J Dog's allergies were beginning to rear their ugly head, we headed back outside for a bit, where we spotted even more cows:
And made our way to the horse barn. This is Harry:
Harry liked Melba.
Since we had not had any fried foods or anything on a stick for at least 20 minutes, we decided to split a plate of Australian Battered Potatoes:
While waiting in line for your ABPs, you could entertain yourself for hours upon hours with the photo cutouts. Thankfully, we got through the line in about a minute and a half.
Here's Rod modeling the latest fashion in deep friend potato. I'm not sure what is australian about them - they're just potatoes sliced the long way, batter dipped and deep fried, with cheese and ranch. But they were quite good:
Next door to the ABP booth was the milk mafia's outpost. All you can drink milk (white & chocolate!) for $1:
This woman asked me why I was photographing the milk booth. I told her I was fascinated by the milk dispensation process. I don't think she believed me.
Even though I was the only one enjoying the cool creamy milk, I still toasted my comrades:
Oddly enough, I have a glass of milk at my side right now as I type this.
Why yes, yes I do. Anyway.... we headed over to the "Miracle of Birth" building, which featured animals due to give birth during the fair, plus baby animals that were already born on earlier fair days. Although it doesn't look like it in this picture, this building was packed.
This building featured an almost painfully loud PA system, and at one point a woman got on the mic and announced that one of the sheep was about ready to give birth. They knew this because the sheep was giving off "discharge". After eating potatoes with ranch dressing, I didn't want to hear anything about discharge.
Baby ducks, always cute:
And a baby miniature horse. Aww.
The crowds were starting to get pretty thick:
J Dog spotted the GIANT SLIDE! (you can even see it reflected in her shades) and begged us all to join her for a thrill.
Fun for the entire family. For about 12 seconds.
More food on a stick:
The corn roast place looked fairly straightforward, until I noticed that you don't buy corn, you buy an admission ticket at the box office beneath the large yellow half ear of corn:
In the middle of all the food... Meth: A Minnesota Menace.
We then snuck inside the crafts building to check out the wares. In the spotlight when we arrived was some dude baking bread who brought some sort of local celebrity into the stage/kitchen with him. I forget her name, but judging by how the crowd treated her, she is some sort of local cooking rock star. And she's about 4' tall.
Back outside, it looked like fog, but was actually smoke from all the burning animal flesh. Mmm... animal flesh.
One of the food offerings that was hyped incessantly in the media about the fair (and there was a lot of hype) was the deep fried tater tot hotdish on a stick with cream of mushroom dipping sauce at Ole and Lena's. We, of course, had to try this. J Dog was diggin' it before we even got it:
J Dog gamely dives in:
This is the one Melba and I shared. I was pretty happy with it, despite the fact that it is basically a couple of meatballs, and a couple of tater tots, breaded and then deep-fried. The dipping sauce was much like Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, but a little thicker.
Here's Melba giving it a try. She wasn't very impressed:
Right next door was der pretzel haus:
While Melba and J Dog waited in line for pretzels, I headed next door for some cheese curds. Cheese curds are small chunks of cheese, batter dipped and deep fried. Have you noticed a theme yet?
Mmm... cheese curds. Back at der pretzel haus, J Dog was in line behind a woman talking on her phone and sporting a rather creepy tattoo of eyes on the back of her neck. Perhaps she chose this to scare her children into behaving while mommy's back is turned.
J Dog is diggin' der pretzel:
Rod picked up a pretzel as well:
The pretzels were hand made right there in the haus:
Melba was especially fond of the cheese sauce:
No trip to the fair would be complete without a corn dog, and I picked a good spot to get one. This was an excellent corn dog:
It's tough to spot, but I was rather amused to see the female busts on the top of this ride all had large breasts:
We got back on the skyride, and this time the line out in front of the cookie manufacturing facility was looking fierce:
J Dog makes her red err... black carpet arrival:
Just outside the skyride exit, I swooped on a key lime pie on a stick which wasn't bad, but not as tasty as I'd hoped:
Inside the food building, you could get even more food on a stick. Walleye on a stick:
Spaghetti and meatball dinner on a stick:
J Dog ordered up a cone of the "world's smoothest nitro ice cream". Order here:
The "nitro" machine. This thing belched out clouds of steam, possibly toxic gases, and borderline flatulent noises every few seconds. But J Dog said the ice cream was very good.
Melba found a place that sold deep fried pickle slices. Sadly, there was no stick:
Back outside, we decided to take a pass on the deep fried twinkies:
This concluded our day at the fair. After all the deep fried foods on sticks, Melba and I bid J Dog and Rod Carew a fond farewell and we hopped back on the shuttle bus. I feel it is safe to say that a good time was had by all, but I feel no need to go back to the state fair for at least 12 more years.
