Monday, August 30, 2004

State Fair Weekend

This weekend was the first weekend of the Alaska State Fair in nearby Palmer . Palmer is about an hour's drive from Anchorage along the Glenn Highway, and is originally the area where farmers settled and is still considered the "salad bowl of AK".

We decided to go on Saturday, since they were predicting cloudy/rainy/cold conditions that day. Luckily for us, there was just a sprinkling of rain, and it was pretty sunny in Palmer.


Here is the entire gate area for the AK state fair. Two lines filing into three cashiers total.

Fairs of course have a lot of food. In this case, we had the usual fare (pizza, hotdogs, hamburgers) but also some strange things like reindeer sausage, caribou burgers, and beer battered halibut. Frank and I split a roast of corn, fried halibut, and a buffalo burger. It was all very good of course.


Friar Tuck's booth

We went to all the contest areas, like Flowers, crafts, photography, and livestock. I've not been a Fair connesieur in my life, so was not prepared for how many pretty flowers, photos, quilts, and rabbit breeds there are at a State Fair. I was very impressed by the very large angora rabbits that looked right out of Monty Python's Holy Grail. They were also having a hula hoop contest, which brought bad memories of hula hoop attempts (Frank says he knows how to hula hoop, but conveniently was not about to demonstrate at the state fair...hmmm :) ).


Picture of Frank outside of the livestock tent and right beside the hula hoop contest

The thing I was really looking forward to was the vegetables. Not only was I interested in what possibly grows up here, but I had heard about the world-record cabbage this year. Here's a picture of the massive cabbage:


The world's biggest cabbage (still to be certified by Guiness)!!!!!


A very pretty cabbage...

For the kids, they had the usual fair rides, as well as an ATV course instead of the car course. These kids were really good considering they should not be driving cars this fast for a few more years at least!!!


Kids learning to drive in the mud at the mini-ATV course

On the other side of the ATV course, you can see if you squint Denali (Mt. McKinley):

If you look close by that tree that's Denali...

And on our way back, we stopped by Mirror Lake in Eklutna. It is a very calm and pretty lake right off the highway.

Great picture of Frank at Mirror Lake

This week, Frank starts work at UAA (today was his first day) and he posed for a picture at 6am this morning. I'm sure he's looking forward to the semester start!!!

Frank getting ready for work...



5 comments:

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Anonymous said...

What? No elk, moose, bear, at the AK State Fair? However, enough cabbage to feed a regiment; We are having the Montgomery County Fair in Dayton this week, but will probably not go; they'll cover it on local TV, no doubt. Great pictures and good summary of what's happening in AK! We love it. Best always from EF&DM.

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Anonymous said...

Trying to see if this will actually work. Nothing new in Towanda (ie no baby yet)...but Grandma Madi and the rest of us are really enjoying your Blog!! Aunt Judy et al.