Boise, ID

Call it Murphy’s Law or just bad luck, but it seems to have become an annual tradition in our family that we plan to attend the Canyon County Fair, decide which day to go, get the kids all excited, and then have things go wrong all day before we can actually get out the door. One year the alternator went out on the faithful family vehicle which meant an afternoon sweating over that project before we could drive the mile from our house to the fair. This year things really seemed to conspire against us: mischievous children, beeper pages, holes in kitchen sink pipes, etc. By some miracle, we finally made it out the door and headed to our favorite parking destination, the baseball field off of Linden behind the fairgrounds, where normally a farm tractor-pulled trailer provides shuttle service to the front gate. For some reason, this year a school bus showed up in place of the tractor, but whatever, it got the job done. We paid our $4.00/person admission and voilá! The smell of cows and the sound of square dancing filled our senses. We had once again overcome all obstacles to arrive at the fair.

The first and most important order of business, of course, is the rides.

A coupon printed off the fair’s webpage allowed us to purchase a family pack (30 tickets) for half-price. The kids chose a carousel ride to begin their adventure, followed by the kiddie roller coaster, the kiddie scrambler (my personal favorite), the motorcycles, the planes, the safari vehicles, the berry-go-round, the trucks, etc. Of course back near the beginning of this list we realized we needed more tickets and had to purchase another family pack.

My husband and I settled for one ride each—me on the scrambler with both the kids where we yee-hawed our way through the spinning and the zig-zagging, and my husband on the Ferris wheel with our daughter. Without kids, we might have done some of the more adult rides, although my husband likes roller-coaster style rides and there aren’t any of those, at least at this fair. He doesn’t do spinning, so his choices would have been fairly limited. Of course, there’s always the helicopter ride, if you want to part with $25.

Fresh out of tickets, we headed into the exhibit hall. Aaahh, air-conditioning! We managed to keep the kids interested long enough to see the children’s art exhibit (who knew there was an entry for Lego construction?), photography, and a few quilts before we had to return to the great outdoors and the animals. For our kids–cows, not that fascinating. Chickens, a little intriguing—especially the White-Crested Polish Black with its snazzy white afro.

Sheep, definitely interesting. Bunnies, very popular. I’ll have to admit, Sparkle, Milkshake, Daisy, and their friends did have great cuteness-appeal. After bunnies, we met Oreo the Pygmy goat sitting in his food trough. Then we couldn’t miss the fat, lazy pigs—Sizzle seemed a rather ironic name for one of these lovely creatures. Horses, much more to my liking, rounded out our animal tour and brought us to the conclusion that ice-cream should be the next stop. Making our way back to the front gate to catch the bus to our SUV, we promised the kids a stop at Dairy Queen.

My daughter decided to enjoy one last hurrah, running through the giant sprinkler spouting from a fire truck parked near the entrance. She came out completely soaked, but cool and refreshed, and by the time the bus arrived 5 minutes later she was almost completely dry. Surprisingly it didn’t wash off the free face-painting she had acquired at a stop somewhere along the way.

The ice-cream hit the spot (and in my son’s case, a few other places as he tried to navigate a soft ice-cream cone!) The Albertson’s parking lot across the street provided entertainment. Determined that fair-goers would not use their lot, they had at least 2 employees prowling, on the lookout for offenders. Three Dog Night performed on this, the last night of this year’s fair. Those gathering for the concert needed a parking spot.

Finally it was time to head home, hose down the kids for bedtime, and face that silly hole under the sink. Water shooting out onto the floor just doesn’t work for us, and my husband was not really a happy camper. For 3 ½ hours, however, we had another great year at the Fair.
Maybe next year, when the last weekend in July rolls around, we will pretend we aren’t going to go, and see if we can bypass all the bad luck.