As the week draws to a close, many people may be debating whether or not to go to the fair this weekend. Prices are high, and for many, money is tight, so yesterday, staff intern Katherine Waters and I decided to explore the cheaper side of the fair – and we did it all with only $10 each.
Our mission was to go to the fair and see how much we could do with our limited funds, and as we discovered, there was a lot of entertainment – even without a lot of cash.
We arrived at the fair around noon and began wandering around to explore our options. We walked through the exhibition hall, where we got to look at art work, vegetables and a number of booths offering information, give aways and in some cases, free goodies. We walked through the 4-H building and saw the items made by 4-H members over the course of the year, including blankets, clothes, drawings, photography and a lot more.
We stopped to pet horses before ducking under a tent to watch the cow judging competition. The people showing their cows were all very excited as the judge walked back and forth in front of and behind them, and finally selected the winners. One of whom he said had “a world of class.” I have no idea what that means when pertaining to cattle, but it was fun to watch the excitement of the kids as they showed their animals, even if I couldn’t tell the difference between one and the next.
A trip to the petting zoo and the kids’ corner, sponsored by Kids’ Kingdom, were next among our activities. The kids’ corner featured an array of free activities for children, including coloring and traveling through a miniature obstacle course on a stick pony. Katherine was eager to try it out, and she even made a couple new friends in the process.
After grabbing a quick lunch at Nina’s II ($3 each), we decided it was time to go on a ride. We scoped out the midway and found a ride that was acceptable to both of us, the Gravitron. We quickly bought our tickets ($6 for six tickets) and hurried back to the UFO-like structure. For those of you unfamiliar with the ride, I’ll explain. On the Gravitron, you enter and lean against a padded wall. The door closes, the ride begins spinning until it hits 85 miles per hour, and then the padded wall cushions roll from the floor to the ceiling, and you go with them. The gentleman running the ride was kind enough to take a photo of Katherine and I, as we spun around in circles, laughing hysterically and trying to hold down our lunch.
Since we could barely walk after leaving the ride, we decided it would be a great idea to try to play a game. Although we had no balance and were continually stumbling into people walking nearby, we decided to try to win a goldfish by tossing a ping-pong ball into a fishbowl. After spending $2 for 10 tries, we stumbled away empty handed. And since our balance was still not fully restored, we decided to sit in the grandstand for a while and watch a tractor pull, a first for both of us. Although it took us a while to figure out exactly what was going on, we both laughed and cheered as one tractor after another tried to pull the weighted trailer across the course.
Eventually, we left the tractor pull, grabbed a couple of sno-cones ($5) and decided to spend our last dollar trying one more time to win a goldfish, and I can now say with some certainty that it is possible to have someone win a fish for you at the fair. (Thanks, Katherine.)
Four hours after we arrived, we had spent our last dollar and decided to go back to the office, but I’m sure if we had tried, we could have found even more fun and inexpensive fair options.