Cheese Curds & Deep Fried Milky Ways

Every year we anticipate the state fair. I absolutely love the atmosphere, the fun and the food, even if I do pay for every little morsel I eat with unending gut rot for 24 hours after leaving. This year I also used the fair as my first opportunity to try out my brand new Nikon D90.
For awhile now we've been using a University camera, a Nikon D100, an I'd grown very accustomed to taking photos through a great lens, resulting in great, crisp photos. We'd been looking at cameras, trying to determine if it was worth it to buy one or just continue to use Drew's work camera, and finally decided, with all the traveling that we do that it would be better to have our own. Drew bought me this new, FANTASTIC camera for our anniversary/birthday and I was anxious to try it out. I'm still learning how to use it and all of the coll things it can do, but so far its one of my most favorite gifts EVER.


We always start the fair with Cheese Curds from the mouse house. We arrived at 10 am on an absolutely stunning Saturday (which turned out to be the day with the highest fair attendance EVER, in the history of the fair), but that didn't hinder our cheese-curdin', off to the food building we went. This year Collin was able to try one, and immediately he started signing "more!", "more!", which was pretty funny, but confirmed that he's part of our family. A delicious breakfast to start our journey.

After cheese curds we wanted to head to the barns before Collin's nap time to get a glimpse of all the animal babies. The Miracle of Life barn is one of my favorite parts of the barn, filled with tons of furry little baby animals. We walked in to find a litter of piglets, and a staff holding one little piglet to pet. After the pigs we wandered over to the baby lambs, the chicks, the baby cows and the baby goat. Collin especially like the baby cow because they were about the same height and he could stand next to the gate and pet the calf.
After the barn we decide to take in a few rides and headed over to the giant slide. On our way we found the deep fried candy bar stand, where I tried my first deep fried milky way and it was DELICIOUS. Collin had a few licks of powdered sugar and was all smiles after we shared our second bit of state fair yummies.
Collin was particularly happy to people watch from his stroller, so while Drew waited in line to go down the slide Collin flirted with all the ladies. After a minute or two of waiting to slide down. After the giant slide we went over to the carousel, where he stubbornly would not ride the horses. Even with me by his side Collin had no interest in sitting on a moving horse, instead we spent the ride standing next to the horse watching it go up and down. So around and around we went, which, immediately after a deep fried milky way made me just a little bit dizzy with a side of gut rot. But, I took it all in stride, there were many more things to eat and only one day to capture it all!


Once we were off the carousel we knew that Collin was getting sleepy and tried t lay him down in his stroller to take a nap while Drew and I explored the boring side of the fair that Collin wouldn't enjoy as much (the art building, the 4H building, the baked goods building, etc.) When we tell other people who aren't from Minnesota about the state fair they don't seem to get the enormity of the "Great Minnesota Get Together", they think its comparable to their local state fair, which in most cases, its anything but. The state fair is absolutely ENORMOUS. You could spend a whole week here and never see the same thing twice. Its also anything but mobile, most of the buildings, events and features here are in permanent building: Sweet Martha's cookie's is not a roadside stand, its a permanent location, as it should be :) If we could only take all of our friends and family to the state fair so they could experience a fair they way you should, Minnesota style.

Once Collin fell asleep and we had time to wander through the barns we were on a mission to get two things: new Star peelers (for free! We just traded in our original ones) and to head to the pet barn to get a new Sticky Wizard roller that picks up an unending supply of Samson hair. Our last Sticky Wizard died unexpectedly when we broke the bracket that held the actual sticky on the handle. Once we acquired our goods we found ourselves looking for more food.
We ended up stopping at one of the "exotic" food buildings, where we tried Porcupine Meatballs with a mushroom marsala gravy and red potatoes, which was yummy. As we were heading to get our food Collin woke up from his nap, fully rested and hungry for lunch, so he enjoyed some of the meatballs, mashed potatoes and the lunch I packed for him too.

After filling up we took Collin over to the Little Hands Farm, which he loved. Collin absolutely loves tractors, so this little miniature farm where he fed the chickens, cows, and sheep (they were all "pretend" animals), rode a little tractor and got to sit on the real thing, was better than sliced bread. He had a ball playing with all the farm gear, sitting on the tractor, and afterward trying some ice cream. Once we finished at the little hands farm we went over to the real tractors on display, the very old, the very new and the John Deere stand where Collin picked up a new tractor to take home and we started looking for an after lunch treat.
To end our day we made our annual closing stop at Sweet Martha's Cookies to get a bucket of chocolate chip cookies. We waited 45 minutes for a bucket of delicious cookies and even, in the theme of state fair gluttony let Collin try his first cookie. It was a stellar way to end the day, as all three of us had filled ourselves to the gills with new and delicious treats and enjoyed a fabulous day at the fair.