The Alaska State Fair

Yesterday, I went to the Alaska State Fair in Wasilla/Palmer (no one seems to know which town its actually in).  It was about an hour from my apartment.  The Alaskan highways connect cities and towns that are pretty isolated otherwise, as this sign demonstrates.  1 city, then 140 miles until the next city, and another 140 to the other.  Pretty isolated, though most cities have some outlying areas that sort of count as suburbs I guess.

The nice part of this of course is there are these really excellent mountain ranges you see all the while you're driving.  In some cases the mountains seem to go above the clouds.  It's really pretty.  In any event, we get to the fair and see far off in the distance a giant slingshot.  It's huge, I'd estimate about 100 feet tall.  I have no idea how it works, because it never seemed to touch the ground, and yet I'd assume it wasn't just the same 2 people going up and down for the whole time we were there.

So we get to the fair and have to park all the way in the last parking lot.  We go through the animal shows and see huge pigs and some newborn chicks and lambs and alpacas and a whole bunch of horses.  It was pretty cool.  Then we went off to look at all the booths and such.  Lots of food you'd only see at a fair.  Elephant ears, fried dough, candy apples, stuff like that.  And donut burgers.  Yeah.

At the fair was this very funny sign.  There were a lot of very funny signs, but this one definitely was the best.  I haven't heard a lot of trashing Texas since coming here, but when I was still in MA I  heard this joke that when Alaska was a state, Texas was mad it was only the 2nd largest state, so Alaska threatened to cut itself in half and make Texas the third largest state.  If everything is bigger in Texas.... what is it in Alaska?  Also, Texan environmentalists say "Don't mess with Texas" (well, all Texans say that, but the environmentalists focus on the "mess").  Alaska has signs that says "Don't trash Alaska."

Then we played some games, the carnival usual.  Fishing for plastic frogs, dart-throwing, etc.  And then it was getting late so we started heading out.  Overall, a very cool experience.  There was also this guy selling a HUGE bucket of popcorn with the Patriot's symbol on it, and he had been selling it for $35, but because it was the last day of the carnival, he offered it to me for $25.  I bargained him down to $20, but when I opened my wallet, I only had $15.  So he just sold it to me for that.  Haggled down more than half the price - felt pretty good about that.

Oh!  And I saw something incredibly..... ridiculous.  A competition involving heavy machinery.  Yeah.  This is a video in which someone had to move 10 eggs using a spoon taped to the edge of a crane.  Yeah.  Not much else to say.  Just watch the video.