Franklin County Fair

We got an early start this morning, and headed up to Malone for the Franklin County Fair. In the morning, we enjoyed the agricultural side of things, and in the afternoon we had fun on the rides. We saw horses and cows and sheep and goats and all sorts of poultry and 4H exhibits and a huge variety of people taking advantage of the great weather to get out and see the fair (it was 38 degrees this morning, when I took the dogs out, but warmed up into the 60s, and was sunny all day). The smells of the fair, animal to junk-food, were wonderful, and each was enticing in its own way.


We started off watching and meeting some horses.


We all loved the goats, especially Ben who even let them nibble on his new coat and his fingers.



He got some kisses too!



The goats were very outgoing, and would stretch out of their pens to greet and kiss us as we walked by...



What would a fair be without checking out a tractor?



One of the things that the 4H has set up for kids was a sand-box filled with feed corn...we didn't really get it either, but it felt cool, and Ben had fun playing in it.



The poultry barn was one of my favorite spots, Ben liked the baby birds, I'm a sucker for the quail and turkeys, and Gail is partial to the guinea fowl and some of the other exotics...we're going to start up our quail-barn again...



I don't know what was in this cage, but I love the looks on their faces...



4H also had a "Reading Tent" set up, and I think that it appealed to Ben as a way to calm down in the middle of all of the excitement...



We all loved the ferris wheel...it gave us a great view of the fair and of the greater metropolitan Malone area...it, like all of these rides, was a first for Ben!



He rode on the merry-go-round, and had a great time!



He rode all by himself on a kid-sized roller-coaster...mom and dad both smiled through our fear...



He had a great time, but got off of both rides a bit dizzy (yes, he rode the coaster in the above 2 pics early in the afternoon, and then in the pic below just before we left)...



I particularly like this pic of Ben's 2nd roller-coaster ride due to the terror in the eyes of the kid sitting behind my 3 year-old son...



He rode on a motorcycle ride all by himself, and loved the part where the bike pulled a "wheelie"...



His smiles (on this ride, and all day) made me so happy my face hurt!!!



We rode the bumper-cars together, and made a fabulous couple...he squeeled each time I rammed somebody, and then pointed to our next victim...mercilessly targeting them for minor-league whiplash...



Gail and Ben rode in this bearish version of the teacup, and timed their spinning to make it almost impossible to get a picture of them...Gail said that Ben loved to help turn the wheel inside, but would occasionally forget what it did, grab it firmly, and be tossed around the inside of the bear, laughing madly as he tumbled...



We rode the ferric wheel again with the last of our tickets...it was a big winner!



Ben tried the funnel-cake, but wasn't convinced that it was food at all...I remain a big fan of them, as long as I can find the carb and fat free ones...as this one was...



Similarly, cotton-candy was a tough sell at first...



But Gail's perseverance finally paid off, and he ate enough to necessitate his developing an all new, "I'm all sugared up" dance, which he used to explain and excuse his post-fair attitudinal and behavioral shortcomings...the dance is cute enough to excuse much worse than what he subjected us to...




He, of course, fell asleep shortly into the drive home, with blue cotton-candy accretions around his mouth and face, and we all enjoyed a low-key and snuggly afternoon and evening.