Pennsylvania

While visiting family in NY, we noted that the Harford Fair in Pennsylvania was happening. Since PA has no official state fair, and the Harford fair is a mere 40 minutes from where we are staying in NY, we made the last minute decision to go. The weather was glorious, and in many ways, this fair redeemed our 2024 fair season, after our Maine fair visit was less exciting than we had hoped.

This fair is in its 166th year and is truly a fixture in northern PA. The fairgrounds have a mixture of old and new facilities, and they are quite proud of their heritage, with lots of displayed memorabilia of past fairs. Free parking and $12 each at the gate was pretty good. Especially considering that this fair includes the midway rides as part of the general admission. We don’t do the rides, but I think that adds great value to the visit.

Something interesting yet quite encouraging happened to us just inside the gate. Lisa always tries to take a selfie of us with the ‘Welcome to the _____ Fair’ sign in the background. We were struggling to get the shot due to the bright sun. This lady spoke up and asked if she could take the picture for us, and we gladly accepted her help. Turns out this woman was one of the Fair Directors, and we had a fun chat about the fair and about our State Fair bucket list.

Once inside, we bought a pretty sizable apple muffin, and a carton of chocolate milk. $3 for breakfast at any fair is a really good deal. As the day went on, we also got some exceptional roast corn-on-the-cob, a brisket sandwich that Lisa could not stop raving about, and salt potatoes. Toward the end we also got a strawberry shortcake. We saw, but did not try, a few food vendors that we’ve never encountered at a fair before, such as “Down Home Homemade Pudding”.

The animal displays were spread across the fairgrounds, which is a little unusual. However, we still got to see both of our favorites; horses (Lisa) and rabbits (David)! They even had a petting table for the rabbits. Lisa didn’t get to see the horses performing (though there was a barrel show scheduled for later in the day after we left), but she enjoyed seeing them in their creatively decorated stalls.

Lisa got to cuddle up with a bald python named ‘Banana’ while I took her picture. That booth had all kinds of exotic pets for sale and available for photos.

All of the 4H exhibits, baked goods, vegetable, arts & crafts, woodworking and photography exhibits were there and were well displayed. A lot of the crafts were behind plastic (something we hadn’t seen before), making them a little hard to see (or get a good picture of), but we still enjoyed them. For most of the day, a children’s tractor pull was happening at the grandstand. While we didn’t sit and watch, it was fun to look in on it a few times as we passed by. It was essentially a mini tractor pulling rig hooked up to a small pedal-powered tractor and they had different age-classes competing. It seemed to generate a lot of excitement.