Saturday, August 16, 2014

The Wonders of the Missouri State Fair

The Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Missouri was a pretty big deal for me. As anyone versed in John Milito trivia can tell you, my hometown is Springfield, Illinois, home of the Illinois State Fair. I have been about 30 times and am pretty emotionally invested, so I had a lot riding on this experience. Illinois GDP is about 3 times that of Missouri so it really shouldn't be much of a contest, but still.

Admission was $8, but there was free parking on the grounds. That's a huge step up from Illinois. In Springfield parking space is so valuable that every front yard within blocks of the fairgrounds turns into a temporary 10-dollar-a-spot parking lot.






We walked into a building with stadium seating just to see if anything was happening inside. Boy was it. We had stumbled onto a very strange event. I'm going to call it the Pony Pull but I have no idea. A team of two miniature horses are led around in front of a pallet stacked full of cement blocks. The horses are hooked to the blocks and then unleashed. They both spring forward and pull the bricks while their handler yells hilarious "giddyup" type encouragement words to them. After three tries they are scored and then the tractor pulls the pile of bricks back into place for the next horse. It was so simple but so strange that we sat and watched for several rounds.


In a beer tent two little girls with cat face-paint sang an awesome rendition of Blake Shelton's "Boys 'Round Here". They were so short that they were actually standing on one of the speakers.


Pigs racing for an Oreo.


They had tiger stripe ice cream in honor of Mizzou's silly mascot. Go Illini.


One of the terrible-for-you food highlights that I had read about before we arrived was the red velvet funnel cake. I don't seem to have any pictures of it, likely because I was busy stuffing it in my face and there was powdered sugar everywhere.


They had a butter cow that was pretty cool, but I'm going to have to say not as awesome as the one in Illinois. Well, it was a buttery American Gothic which I appreciated even more since we went to Grant Wood's house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


Zoe was tired from all of the excitement and decided to take a little rest.




We entered an exhibition building that was probably called "The Weird Stuff People Make 
When They Have Way Too Much Time On Their Hands Pavilion".


Got things laying around? Got glue? Then you've got crafts, my friend.


A map of Missouri made out of shotgun shells. I wonder if this is topographical too... that would be pretty rad.


Shotgun shell Christmas lights.


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