Let's Go to the Fair!

Just like in states all over this great nation, the greater LA area has several county fairs in the summertime; although we live in Los Angeles County, the Orange County Fair is the one that gets all of the attention here, and after missing it last year due to moving and whatnot, we wanted to make sure to attend in 2017.  Let's go to the fair!

That's the underneath side of a giant chicken up top

Like last year, Chris' firm is on their summer schedule, which means he works 9 hours each normal work day and then gets every other Friday completely off.  After finding a Groupon for discounted fair admission ($7 versus the normal $12) that worked on one of his off days, we planned to hit up the Fair on August 11th, and I also secured vacation for myself.  I downloaded the daily schedule and read the reviews for the most interesting new fair food, finding those locations on my map.  We were ready!

Since the Fair didn't open until noon on the day we picked, we spent our morning going swimming, hanging around the house, and catching up on television.  As we were relaxing, Chris realized that 8/11/17 was the 16th anniversary of our very first date; what a great way to celebrate!

We left the house around 11:30, getting parked and through the admission gate just after the official opening time, and we immediately started wandering around, figuring out what to eat.  Our main plan for the Fair was to spend the majority of our day (we knew we'd probably stay for around 3-4 hours, and we'd be done once the midway started to fill with people and it hit the afternoon high temperatures) near the livestock area, along with stops in the culinary demonstration tent and woodworking/crafts pavilion.  While the OC Fair has all of the crazy rides and carnival games that you could ever want, we'd be eschewing those; Chris doesn't like those types of rides anyway, and with the recent tragedy up north at a carnival fresh in our minds, there was no way we were getting near them (truly, we're too old for those now anyway).

Hooray!  We're at the Fair!

Our first stop was Chicken Charlie's, where we split the Krispy Kreme fried chicken sandwich:

Overall, this was better than both of us expected.  The sweetness of the doughnut mixed with the salt of the fried chicken was good, almost like a chicken and waffle-style combo; Charlie's also had a version topped with ice cream, but we both vetoed that.

Next, it was on to the woodworking and culinary exhibits; we saw all sorts of amazing carvings, furniture, and even guitars, and after marveling at the award-winning cakes and pies, we decided it was time for dessert.

Our happy little macaron ice cream sandwich.

He was delightful!

While wandering the fairgrounds (where we've now been three times in the past three months - once for the OC Marathon in May, once for the Scottish games in June, and now to the Fair), we also found all sorts of unholy combinations of fair food we were too afraid to sample, including this:

All the nopes

Eventually, it was time to move on to the livestock area.  We wandered through the barns on the property, checking out llamas, goats, oxen, chickens, rabbits, and even the visiting Budweiser Clydesdales (they'd do a parade around the fairgrounds at 5pm, but we were gone by then).  Just before 1:30, we found a seat in a nearby tent and waited for our first exhibition of the day, a camel milking demonstration.  The folks from Oasis Camel Farms, down on the way to San Diego, brought five of their camels to visit, including one big dude camel, and two sets of moms and wee babies.

Lotsa camels

So cute!

We learned all sorts of information about camel milking and how it was different from milking cows (camels wait until their babies nuzzle to drop their milk down into their udders, and then, they only release milk for 90 seconds at a time), as well as all sorts of other camel-related facts.

It's camel milking time!

The demonstration was pretty neat, and it let out in plenty of time for us to get a seat for our 2pm show, the Wild West Turkey Stampede.  I think the Stampede might have been new this year, or perhaps it just became more visible in 2017, as I don't remember hearing anyone talk about it in past years.  Whatever the case, we're surely glad we went, and we highly recommend it.

The two folks running the show raise these turkeys on their farm, and apparently, turkeys are natural hunters who like to chase down their food.  By putting grain in the bed of an RC pickup truck, our ringmasters figured out they could get the turkeys to run (they're chasing the grain in the truck) a few short laps around a course padded with a sawdust-like material, much to the delight of fair-goers.  The first race consisted of just two turkeys, both grown butterball-style breeds.  Please, if you do nothing else today on the internet, watch the videos in this blog.  It will make your day, I promise:

The sound's not essential to the video,

but you may enjoy it
(that applies to all the videos here).

After the two-turkey race, we were treated to nine adolescent birds of the same variety tearing around the track, a bit quicker and ungainlier, if that's even possible.  To keep them straight for viewing purposes, the folks in charge colored them a bit with food coloring before their racing season - that's why they're red and blue (it did not seem to bother the turkeys one bit):

Poultry in motion

(sorry, I couldn't help myself)

The event was concluded with one more race, run with a selection of turkeys from heritage species, all of which were quite lovely to see compared to the larger, slower butterballs.  We didn't get footage of this one, so you're just going to have to come see it on your own.  Suffice to say that it was just as entertaining as the races shown above.

After the turkeys, we had about 45 minutes to go before the Fair's annual marquee event, the pig races (yes, really), so we wandered back down the midway to the beer garden for some liquid refreshment.  Although folks often decry the acquisition of smaller, independent breweries by giants like InBev, what this often means for those little guys is wider distribution, and we were more than pleased to see our favorite Four Peaks brews on tap, way out here in the OC.  We happily picked a Peach Ale (me) and a Hop Knot (Chris) as our selections.

It's a Fair Day miracle!

We slowly mosied our way back to the livestock area, arriving about 15 minutes early for the pig races.  We found seats in the shaded section of the designated arena and chilled out, people watching and drinking our refreshing adult beverages.

Happiness is Four Peaks beer

and pig races.

When you hear about the OC Fair, it's normally the pig races that feature prominently, so we knew we absolutely couldn't miss these.  There were three races run total, with four pigs each; the top two in each preliminary race made it to the final and avoided being made into pork rinds (or something, I don't know - all of the pigs seemed perfectly happy out there).

In the starting blocks...

...and there they go!

Here's some video of the event:

As you can see at the end of this, some pigs run straight into the air conditioned trailer, while some stop at the feed boxes on the right side of the image for additional snacks.  Don't they look like they're enjoying themselves?

For the second race, the ante was upped a bit and gates were added to two spots in the course for the pigs to jump.  They did quite well!

When pigs fly!

 And, a video as well:

That pretty much concluded our day at the Fair, other than stopping for a shaved ice to eat on the way to the car.  It was a great day and a lot of fun, particularly because we weren't battling huge crowds the entire day.  We'll be sure to hit up the Fair again next year, and we'll endeavor to catch this event the next go-around, provided they have it again:

"Are we still doing 'phrasing?'"

Later!

Amy