MN State Fair

In keeping with our Labor Day Camping tradition, Darrell and I hit the road Friday after work for a fun-filled weekend of camping. And since we have (quite a few) items to still cross off our "101 in 1001" list--before April 20th!--we planned our trip strategically and killed a few birds with one stone. Namely, we planned our camping excursion near Minneapolis so that on Sunday we could hit up the famed Minnesota State Fair.

Now, you may be wondering why we chose to fulfill our "Go to a State Fair" goal by attending the Minnesota fair instead of the one in our home state. Well, quite simply, Minnesota's fair is much larger, and subsequently has much more to do (and eat!). To put it in terms of numbers: South Dakota's fair aims to have over 200,000 attendees during its five-day run. Minnesota's fair, which runs for twelve days, can have 200,000 visitors in a single day. And since we were there over Labor Day weekend, which is naturally their busiest time, things were pretty packed.

Minnesota was also an easy choice for us because I have family in the area, so we were able to meet up with them at the fair, which was lots of fun. While Darrell and I enjoyed the fair just ourselves, it was cool to see the excitement of the fair through the eyes of some kids--plus the fair had lots of fun activities for the young ones. Like a totally awesome ropes course put on by the Boy Scouts and a live fishing station sponsored by Gander Mountain.

As an added surprise, I was able to cross "Sing Karaoke" off my portion of the "101 in 1001" list. The State Fair had what they called a Giant Sing Along stage, where fifteen to twenty microphones were available for anyone to step up to and sing karaoke into. So while it maybe wasn't true karaoke, we're still counting it. And if opportunity to do "real" karaoke presents itself, I'll maybe still consider it. Maybe.

Getting ready to sing along to "We are Young" by Fun--great song!

And of course, no trip to a fair is complete without some delicious fair food. It was nice to be out there with a group, because then we could share some of the items and not have to spend all our money (or calories!) on a full serving. I think my favorite was definitely the cheese curds, although Sweet Martha's cookies and the freshly made ice cream sundae were pretty good as well. And I refused to leave until we got something totally ridiculous....

Believe it or not, that's the "small" turkey leg. It was pretty awesome. Sadly, we didn't see the booth that was selling red velvet funnel cakes until after we'd already eaten our full, so I guess that's just a reason to go back another year. Which I certainly look forward to doing.

We've got pictures from our camping adventure as well, but Darrell doesn't have those edited yet so I'll have to get to them later this week. I will say this--the campground was pretty awesome, and I'm convinced we had the best campsite at the park!