MN State Fair…

I should have worn my pedometer today, because I’m sure I got way more than 12,000 steps in. Whew! I’m tired, I’m stuffed, my ankles are swollen and I’m going to bed, now, at 21:00.

We had a good time though. We got an early enough start that we were able to find a place to park on a neighborhood street by the north entrance and the Pet Building. We got to see Australian shepherds run the agility course. There was an older, slower dog and a wildly excited, very young dog, one wouldn’t complete the teeter totter, one went through the wrong end of the tunnel, twice, and others were so, so, fast. I thought of Kate from http://chroniclesofacountrygirl.blogspot.com/ because of her George. He’s a border collie, but I know they are known to run agility courses too.

We took the sky ride to the other side of the fair grounds just so we could get our Turkey Sandwich and All You Can Drink for $1.00 milk. I don’t think it was even 10:30 yet, but we couldn’t even think of looking at a thing until we had that sandwich in our hands. Mmmmmm, delicious, it’s one of the foods that we always get.

We visited sheep, goats, pigs, cows, llamas, and horses. There were no chickens, rabbits, or turkeys yet, probably later on this week. Did you know that Belgian horses are HUGE? We decided to sit for a bit and watch the teens and pre-teens perform English riding. They did such a nice job, even if some of the horses had other ideas in their heads than performing correctly. There always has to be at least one, doesn’t there? Before the show, I was able to get my raspberry malt from the Dairy Building, which happens to be the other food that I always get.

Lots of walking through various buildings, Horticulture, Fine Arts, 4-H, Education, and the one that has all of the quilts, clothing, jewelry, jams, jellies, breads, cakes, and demonstrations, and of course, we walked through tons of people, and ended up going to the Northern Equipment building that has tools, and gadgets and log splitters. Did I just say log splitters? Yup, they even had a State Fair sale going on, and one of them just happened to be the log splitter David wants so he can split all the wood at Barb’s cabin in Wisconsin. It sort of followed us home and is right this very minute sitting in our garage. It’s a very pretty log splitter, blue and silver. Ha! Well, we figure if we use wood to heat our house the majority of the time, why not have a log splitter? David isn’t a spring lumberjack anymore.

We ate and wandered a while longer and now I’m sitting here writing this when I told myself I was going to bed. So, goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Oh, one more thing…I got to see my favorite thing while we were passing the Pet Building on our way out, the Police K-9 dogs in action. Take a young, handsome, extremely fit ( in a tight t-shirt ) Police officer, with a padded arm, and a Police dog trained to attack on command, or when their partner is threatened, and mmmm, oops, sorry, ouch!! I tell you, it sure is a good thing I never do anything wrong, because  I would NOT want to get attacked by a Police dog.