to the county fair

One beautiful evening the whole family piled into the car(s), with dear friend Katherine, and headed cross country to the Elkhart County 4-H fair.

First stop, of course, was the Dairy Bar #2.  This is my brothers favorite part about the fair...piles of really fresh ice cream for very little coin.

 The best thing about Dairy Bar #2 is it is right near the grandstand and people watching is in prime season.  I was just loving the two characters in the left part of this photo.  They are Amish but wear bell-bottomed pants and one is in corduroy.

 

Mohawk-ed babies, spotted cattle and kissing naked sheep.

Here we found a taxidermy booth as some sort of nature preservation campaign.  Preserved is right.  Kitty and I had a bit of fun until an elementary aged little girl came and told us that we weren't supposed to touch the animals..."there is a sign!" 

  Broom-making.  This was very interesting.  The brooms are made of a certain kind of corn stalk, specifically grown for the purpose (and seeds).  It takes 10 feet of a row of corn to make one broom.

The piles of tassel.

The Farmstead had baby animals...oh they were so cute.  i just wanted to snuggle up with them.

All the animals at the fair are in prime viewing readiness.  Cleaned up and haircut and laying in beautiful beds of straw.

  The bunny hut.  Rows and rows of rabbits of all color and size.  All the cages are accompanied by signs that say not to stick your fingers in the cages so naturally Lewis disregarded this.

The llama tent finalized our animal viewing evening.  They are just such curious animals.  Not quite this, not quite that, but wholly perfect all the same.

Last stop of the night...FRIED FAIR FOOD!  Katherine and I (and Lewis) shared a funnel cake and blooming onion.  They were so delicious and terrible it was a good thing we had heck of a trek back to our car.

I think the view from the overflow parking lot was worth all the prickly weeds we had to hoof it through.