Frequently Asked Questions

How many fairs have you visited so far? 30 (more than halfway!)

How long have you been doing this? After moving from Upstate NY to North Carolina, and visiting our new home state's fair, we decided to make it a bucket list to visit every state fair at least once. We had both been to the New York State Fair as kids, but our first rule was the visit only counts if we were there together. The good news is that we visited the NYS fair shortly after we were married, so it counts! We hope to get back to that one since the last visit was in the 80s.

How and why (part 2)? It was 2013 when we decided that this should be a bucket-list project. State fairs offer a great way to get to know each state, and a good excuse to travel and see the country. Along the way we get to see remote family, and stop at cool landmarks (my wife would fill this area with stories about visiting Fixer Upper sites and stalking Joanna Gaine's house if she were writing this).

How many fairs do you visit in a year? Generally we make one fair trip per year which has encompassed as many as 4 fairs. COVID-19 broke our rhythm a little, but we are back on track now.

How do you select which fair to attend next? We plan our itinerary around fairs with overlapping dates. Since we live on the east coast, we are working our way west. Yes, we are totally planning to do Alaska and Hawaii fairs eventually.

Will you visit every state? One thing to note is that some states no longer have state fairs. From what we have been told, the fair is an easy budget cut, and most likely to get axed in non-agricultural states. We've also learned that many states have more than one state fair because it is used as a marketing title to get attention. When this happens we try to figure out which is the 'carnival' fair and which is the real showcase of the history, culture and agriculture of the state, the latter being the better definition of a true state fair.

What's up with the pictures? We have loads of pictures from each fair. For storage economy, we only loaded a small sampling of each fair to this website.

Any tips for state fair newbies? If possible, avoid the first and last days of the fair. The first day is quite often overcrowded and some exhibits have not arrived yet. There are also throngs of politicians holding up the entry gate with opening ceremony speeches and other self-promotion. The last day a lot of exhibits have left early for one reason or another, and most of the agricultural and 4H baking exhibits are showing signs of decay by then.