Friday, September 3, 2010

Minnesota State Fair

Yesterday we went to the fair. In it's 8th day, it's had over one million visitors so far. It was my first time to attend a state fair since I was a child in Indianapolis. I guess state fairs are a mid-west thing. Here are some highlights.


Getting there - Easy as pie. We drove to the University of Minnesota campus, parked for free, and boarded a bus that dropped us at the entrance.

Miracle of Birth Exhibit - All kinds of animal moms in the animal Labor and Delivery. We saw brand new pigs, calves and lambs and we watched lots of chicks and ducks poking out of their shells.


Fine Arts - It was more like "fun arts & crafts." But I liked it.


Rides - We rode the sky flyer back and forth across the entire fair. Great vantage point.

Food - Anything you could possibly imagine that could be dipped in chocolate and deep fried - was! The most popular food was deep fried cheese curds. I loved seeing people walk around with pork chops on a stick. I did read an article last week saying that the Texas fair had outdone us because they've perfected deep fried beer on a stick. They've managed to inject beer into a pretzel, dip it in chocolate and deep fry it. When you bite down, warm beer squirts out.

Dave and I ate.....foot long hot dogs and roasted ears of corn.


Observations - First, as I've mentioned before, Minneapolis is culturally diverse. Whenever we go out I see all kinds of people including women in burkas and lots of ethnic groups.

The fair isn't like that. It's middle class, white America. I did see an old man wearing a tee shirt that said "AN OLD LUTHERAN" across the front. Below that was a picture of Martin Luther. I thought that was cool.


And I did see one African American Muslim. It was Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison. He was speaking at the radio station and being given a hard time by some farmers.











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