scenes from the Ohio State fair and a couple from Nicaragua

    I'm a city girl at heart but once a year when the time rolls around I do love me some Ohio State Fair.

   So does Tom.   

    What do we love about the fair?
    Well, actually not the above midway rides. I just liked the backdrop.

    Though we do like the tractor-pulled shuttle ride from the parking lot to the fairgrounds:

    It's kind of like a big hay ride but with wooden benches instead of hay.


    Also, the State Fair shuttle kind of reminds me of the buses in Leon, Nicaragua which I rode in while visiting Claire when she worked there:

    Except that this bus had a roof.  That's me in the white hat smiling.  ( I eventually gave up my seat to a bent-over old lady who said, "Gracias, chela." ["Thank you, white woman."])


    Anyway, I guess that's where the resemblance ends, since  the bus in Leon took us to the marketplace (that's Claire in the photo)  where they sold this kind of food:

   

And this kind of stuff:

   

Whereas the fair shuttle took us to where they sell this kind of food:

   

And this kind of stuff:

      This is a tee-shirt. They had  them in lots of colors.

   



I ended up buying this from a country crafts stand:

   

    We ate lunch at the Fair. 
    However, just as one must be careful about eating street food in Nicaragua to avoid getting hepatitis, one must likewise be careful about eating State Fair food to avoid coming home with type-2 diabetes.

  


We opted for the "State Fair Healthy Option",  pulled pork sandwich platters.

    My roasted corn on the cob was so good that I just had to share it with Tom

    Who shared my opinion that it was one awesome  cob of corn.

   
    Our appetites well-satiated, we walked around the grounds and saw the sights.
    We visited the Laushe Building and looked at the exhitibits by The Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and 4-H members.

    We saw some interesting & yummy Girl Scout entries and chatted with a sweet, friendly member of the Future Farmers of America.

  
    We visited the crafts exhibitions at the Di Salle Building:

A Brillo pad dolphin and a duck tape purse.

 A beautiful table setting with a "Frozen" theme.  

---

And my favorite of all the exhibits, the cakes:

    Believe it or not, this life-size wedding dress is a cake.

    As is this pick-up truck

   

We visited the animals:

       Strange alien rabbit.

Mama and her 2-day-old baby                                                     I passed on this one

   No, these are not the  Ku Klux Lambs.
    The sheep are dressed in these outfits to keep their wool clean  just before they're entered to before the judges.
  

    Two brothers, children of a sheep farmer, cleaning up the area.
    Unfortunately we missed the pigs and horses this year.  But it wouldn't be  the Ohio State Fair without stopping by the dairy building to see the butter cow sculpture:

      Along with the other butter critters:

     We also visited the Cox building, which houses the art exhibits, but it was prohibited to photograph the art pieces inside the building. 

   However  I was rather captivated by this piece out on the fairground.

  
Lastly we visited the Ohio military history exhibition and Civil War encampment (these are all real guys):

        Where we met General Sherman:

      And we got to see  Abraham Lincoln:

      And Tom won a water bottle for knowing the answer to 2 out of 3 Ohio trivia questions:

      As we  spent only six hours at the fair this year we missed, along with the pigs and horses,  some other good exhibits, such as those of  the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Transportation.
    But it was a well-spent six hours, anyway.  And there's always next year, right?