Friday, October 2, 2009

Yavapai County Fair 2009

Today I made my annual visit to the Yavapai County fair. There is, as always, the Midway with its temptations of turkey legs, corn dogs and funnel cakes.

And if you haven't filled your stomach, you might take in one or two of the rides.

For some reason, when I was a kid I could handle the "scarier" rides but I was terrified of the ferris wheel.

Leaving the midway behind there is the requisite display of farm machinery and if you're so inclined . . a hayride.

Moving inside the main building I was confronted by a massive model train layout.

Very impressive with layouts of different cities around the country and even Mount Rushmore. One of the modelers told me the trains were N guage, which may be the tiniest. The tracks appeared to be no more than half an inch apart.

There is always a lot of art by young people on display.
And some by older crafters, including this beautiful quilt.

I also spent a lot of time viewing a photography exhibit. Lots of fine work but it didn't seem right for me to photograph someone else's photographs so you'll have to go see them for yourselves.

Besides, I had animals to see. First a sheep who was more interested in his neighbors than me.

But one of his mates was less bored and showed me his beautiful turquoise eyes.

A big white turkey ruffled up his tailfeathers when I took his photo. He may have heard about those turkey legs being grilled, sold and eaten out on the midway!

A couple of geese were wisely standing in their swimming pool to keep cool.

I'm not sure what this strange apparition was. It was in with the chickens so it was some type of fowl. A woman standing alongside me said "You can't tell which end is which!"

My favorites are the bunnies and there are many at the fair. This big thumper probably is more rabbit than bunny but he was beautiful.

The soft fur begs to be petted but signs everywhere warn people not to stick their fingers in the cages. So I didn't.

There's much more to see but my old legs grew tired so I reluctantly left for home.

11 comments:

  1. The unknown fowl is a blue silkie chicken (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=silkie+chickens&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3RNFA_enUS258US287&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=parGSq7ZIY2YsgPRxNyhBQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4). We have two white silkies; they are pretty silly birds.

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  2. OmegaMom - Thanks for the info. Yes they ARE kinda silly . . . but touchable.

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  3. Grea photos! The Turquoise eyes of the sheep are really amazing.

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  4. Very cool shots of the fair! Fun stuff for sure.

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  5. Great Fair shots (is that an oxymoron? *smile*)! Brings back fond memories of Jr. High and High School when our school bands would go out to the Fair to perform, and enjoy wandering around afterwards! Thanks for sharing

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  6. Love the photo of the quilt. Hope it was a prize winner.

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  7. Duta - I don't think I even noticed them until I looked at the photo.

    Judy - Thanks!

    Warren - It was my pleasure.

    Quilteddogs - I was very much struck by that quilt and they usually aren't "my thing."

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  8. You missed one of the great picture-taking opportunities, which is taking photos looking down, from the ferris wheel. Especially great fun with a video camera. However, it looks like you did a good job of covering much of the fair -- that's a lot of walking.

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  9. What wonderful photos! thanks for sharing with us.

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  10. Julie - Those darned things just scare the hell out of me, always have, so I'll have to skip that opportunity!

    Meggie - Thanks for looking at them!

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  11. Hi, Karen her, I just interviewed this fair for their 97th upcoming event, Imagine a 97 year old county fair in Prescott Arizona. I wonder what the first one was like. I am sure that this one will be as great as last years and have lots to see and do.

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