State Fair!

Today I experienced the legendary Texas State Fair (which is officially called "The State Fair of Texas", but I find that indirect adjectival construction to be superfluous).  I met up with my friends Rachel and Miranda at their house, and then we took the DART to the fair.

The Fair, being your typical state fair only somewhat larger (we are in Texas, after all), had lots of different attractions: livestock, food vendors, a Ferris wheel, rides too cheaply terrifying to ride, product samples, LOTS of people, boat rides, auto shows, cooking demonstrations, games...there was a lot to look at even if we didn't actually "do" everything.  However, we did engage in one absolute State Fair necessity...what I like to call "The Fried Food Adventure."

Like any state fair, the Texas State Fair attendees subsist primarily on fried food, particularly fried food that has no business being fried (including fried beer and fried butter, neither of which we sampled).  Here's what our fried food menu looked like...don't worry, we shared everything!

Fried Foods #1 and #2: Fried Smores (left) and Fried Pumpkin Pie (Right)

Fried Food #3: Tornado Taters

Fried Food #4: Fried Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Fried Food #5: Onion Blossom

So we definitely had our fill of fried foods...not that we even came close to sampling everything that the Fair had to offer.  To give you an idea, here's what your typical food vendor menu looked like:

As you can see, the bulk of the menu reads "Fried ____".  That's about standard.  Unfortunately, we didn't actually eat anything on a stick.

The fair also had lots of baby animals, like baby cows and baby chicks and baby goats and baby kittens and baby puppies and baby pigs...they were adorable, and I took several pictures of them, but let's face it, everyone's seen cute baby animals before.  What everyone has not seen...

BUTTER SCULPTURE.  Strike that...LIFE-SIZE BUTTER SCULPTURE.

It was crazy.  I suppose that butter is a particularly pliable material and thereby lends itself nicely to the sculptural trade.  Still, it's not something you see everyday.  It was in a giant refrigerator, for the logically-minded people who are curious about the art of butter sculpture.

Some more State Fair sights...

An ENORMOUS pig!

Giant license plate pinwheels!

This creepy portrait of 1980s Nicolas Cage, on a ride with no apparent connection to Nicolas Cage...

A lovely view of the Dallas skyline as seen from atop the Texas Star Ferris Wheel...

The Ferris Wheel itself...

A Man on a Stick...(this was SO weird, I couldn't figure out exactly how it was done...

And Big Tex, the symbol/mascot of the Texas State Fair.  Big Tex has been presiding over the Fair for over 50 years, and apparently he talks, although I never actually heard it...or if I did, I didn't realize it.

And so, after four and a half hours, and COMPLETELY exhausted, we caught the train back home.  Not that we went home empty handed of course...we had a couple Fair goodies to take with us.

Namely, beef-themed goodie bags (including recipe cards, steak seasoning, and barbecue sauce)...

And a giant bag of cotton candy...which we split, and of which my portion is still sitting festively on my kitchen counter.  So that was our day at the fair!  Hope you had fun living vicariously through us!