Our State Fair is the Best State Fair

Saturday we headed across the river to the fairgrounds, "Where Minnesota Gets Together!" We kicked off State Fair 2011 with a mocha on a stick and, thus fortified, we headed for the animal barns via the DNR Fish of Minnesota pond. (That's the Department of Natural Resources fish pond to you non-natives. When you live in a state like Minnesota, where the local public radio station has like, three weather people on staff; a special weather report on Fridays; and boating, fishing, and hunting news is often reported in the top half of the hour during these seasons, you get to know your DNR acronym.)


First up was the pig barn because really, you can't walk about the fair without some funny animal headgear. (Cabela's--all things sporting and hunting emporium--was giving away headgear with big fish on either side.) Pig ears procured, we motored on.

Now Fans, if you want to wake yourself up, what you need to do is make sure you visit the chicken barn before 8am. In a word: LOUD. Cock-a-doodle DO! We made the rounds of all the barns except the horse barn, in which Our Hero expressed no interest.

Maybe we should have pressed it because he also initially expressed no interest in stopping to check out the John Deere equipment before getting into the spirit of it all. Birdie, on the other hand, was all, "Who is this John Deere, and am I old enough to date? Because JD has some pretty sweet rides." We spent a pretty long time checking out the tractors, front loaders, back hoe loaders, and lawn mowers. (While Clara was busy kicking the tires on a tractor with an enclosed cab, Julie overheard one man tell his lady companion that was the sort of tractor he wanted, "But without the sissy cab." His lady friend pointed out that the enclosed cab would allow him to work in air conditioned comfort. Apparently being smart and cool is the new sissy.)




From there, we made our way to a children's farm. We'd like to tell you what this all entailed, but so far as we could tell, it entailed a whole lot of waiting in line to walk through, for example, a silo. So even though Joe was all decked out in an apron, grasping his silver bucket, we made like the donning of the apron and gathering of the bucket was the attraction there and split for the food building where we had lunch before heading home.