New York

For a multitude of reasons, this year's fair travel will be just one trip. We are kickin' it old school and repeating our original state fair visit to New York. Yes, this was state fair number one for us way back in 1986. This time around it was a very overcast and temperate day, and being on a Tuesday, not too crowded. We arrived just after the gates opened at 9AM, and found that most buildings were closed until 10AM. So we sat and watched some of the draft pony show in the horse arena. This was not as exciting compared to other horse judging we have attended, but it killed some time.

The iPhone app for the fair was a little disappointing, so we mostly relied on the paper map to get around. Once the buildings were opened, we quickly found the 4H exhibits (where we got to shoot at virtual targets and pet horses), Agricultural Museum (with old-time cabin display and several people dressed in period clothing and/or demonstrating various skills from back then), and visited the Dairy Products building to see the butter sculpture. While there, we ate a cream puff that rivaled the one at the Wisconsin fair, and bought 4 milk tokens (for a buck), each good for a white or chocolate milk. Naturally, we got chocolate with all our tokens, and were told that chocolate is the overwhelming choice with fairgoers.

We also visited the Aquarium building, with various fish and turtles found in NY, and also the Exhibition building with an “Ice Age” display of several animatronic animals that supposedly lived back then. It seemed like a lot of wasted space in that building, but kids really enjoyed it, and on a hot day it would be a welcome break from the heat.

One of our favorite buildings was the “Carriage House” with many carriages of various styles, used in the 1800’s, but probably the best building was the arts and crafts building where we saw everything from photography to decorated cakes, though not nearly as much as we expected to see in a big fair like NY (and many typical craft items were missing altogether-no quilts or needlework on display, etc.) We did enjoy what they had, but it left us (especially Lisa) wanting more.

Besides the butter sculpture, we were excited to see that there was also a very large sand sculpture, with the 200th Anniversary of the Erie Canal being the theme. Attached to one of the buildings was something we haven’t seen before…a Circus /carnival room filled with intricate miniatures of circuses and carnivals; even trains that would carry the circus animals in the past, like Barnum and Bailey. David also got to see some antique tractors; something he always looks for, and Lisa got to see some great flowers and arrangements. There was also two outdoor courtyards with great landscaping that people could wander in and out of as they went through the rest of the building. It was disappointing to not see any of the ‘best of’ fruits, vegetables, baked goods, jams, pickles, etc. It’s possible we missed a building with them somewhere, but we are pretty sure we got to all of them.

Even though there was not any exciting horse events to watch, we did get to walk through all the animal barns and see our favorites (there were plenty of bunnies for David and horses for Lisa). We also saw all the usuals; cows, goats, pigs, sheep, birds, etc. though the barns were not full, probably due to the fact that we were there at the halfway point of the fair. There was also a birthing barn (which we’ve seen at several other fairs) and this time there was a cow actually giving birth! We couldn’t get close enough for a very good look, but got enough of a peek to see that the calf was halfway out. They were explaining the process over the loudspeaker and that it could be a long time before she fully delivered, so we didn’t stick around long.

To eat we had a vanilla crème puff, chocolate milk, chocolate chip cookies, salt potatoes (this was the longest line we stood in, as there was a big section of the building dedicated to “The New York State Great Potato Booth” where you could get baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, tater tots or salt potatoes for $1 with a couple topping included and other topping for only 50 cents more…needless to say this was very popular), a giant garlic knot (this was disappointing-we read about it in an article), chocolate chip cookie dough from a unique vender called “Bowl of Dough” (also featured in the article we read), Pizza Fritte, and a couple sodas and waters.