Fran It’s Date Day at the Fair
Every year Katie and I try to get a day off and spend the day at the Fair. Thursday was that day this year. After we got Henry off to school, we headed out. The skies were a bit gloomy, and there was a bit of an on and off misty rain, so we were hoping that would keep the morning crowds down. Remember the parking debacle from Day 1? Well, the Fair took care of us this time. I mean, REALLY took care of us! This is the view from our parking spot:
WHAAAAAAAAT?!?! How the heck did we get this VIP parking?? No idea - the parking lot was not empty, but the flag folks just kept waving us forward until we were in this crazy close spot! Well, that certainly made up for day 1!! What a good omen to start the day! We were all smiles to start our adventure.
Our first stop was the Miracle of Life barn - always good to start the day with farm babies. Good morning!
In all of our years going to the Fair, we’ve never been in the Miracle of Life barn at the right time to see a live birth. UNTIL NOW! We had prime viewing of a lamb birth! Here’s mama sheep with her 1-minute-old baby.
It was a little hard to capture with the crowded pen and the vet students who were assisting with the delivery. Here’s a not-too-graphic video clip of the key moment - the crowd goes “wild”!
After this stellar start, we wanted to take advantage of the lack of crowds to tackle some of the long line food items. We headed over to West End to visit Nordic Waffles, and the line was short (for Nordic - about 10 minutes). We took advantage of the line time to grab the PB Bacon Cakes from Blue Barn. In my pre-Fair review, I rated these “run away!” but Katie was more interested in giving them a chance.
Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed. These were a hot mess. There’s really nothing about this dish that we liked. The PB & J component made no sense. The pancake-wrapped bacon should have been good but even that was no bueno. We both agreed that these ingredients never came together to make anything coherent. A major letdown - you can safely skip these.
Back at Nordic, Katie wanted to try their new Waffle Burger. You’ll remember from my new food hot takes that I was skeptical of Nordic’s ability to pull off a great burger, so I hedged our bets by also getting one of the darlings of last year’s new foods, the Nordic Waffle Dog. First, the burger:
Pretty straightforward - smashburger, cheese, sauce, waffle. The waffle has carmelized onions in it and was probably the highlight of the dish. The sauce is Whataburger burger sauce - slightly zingy, pretty decent. The burger and cheese were nothing special. It was missing some acidity and some crunch - something that pickles would have dramatically improved. (To be fair, they did also have ketchup as an option). Altogether, this was just ok, and more importantly, paled in comparison to the Wafffle Dog.
Now this, this has all the elements. The Kramarczuk’s hot dog is a couple of steps up from a typical hot dog. The fried onions and big slice of pickle (which seemed freshly homemade) make a huge difference texturally. The bacon and sauce add lots of umami flavor. The cheese here is unnecessary - this dish is already pretty close to perfect. I loved it all over again, it was Katie’s first try and she loved it too. With the same price for these two items ($12), the Waffle Dog is by far the better choice at Nordic.
Another line-beating strategy was to get the deep fried ranch dressing from LuLu’s while over here. Keep in mind it’s like 10am and we’ve already had a waffle burger and waffle dog, but we had goals and there are no food timing rules at the Fair!
Our St. Louis friends will get this description instantly - the best way to describe this is toasted ravioli meets crab rangoon with a kick of ranch flavor. The outside is more toasted rav, which is to say more substantial texturally, which was nice. The filling is basically cream cheese filling, but ranch flavored - which is much better than the initial visual I had of a puddle of ranch dressing spilling out of these things! I’m pretty skeptical of hot honey in general, but here it actually was the right choice for a dipping sauce. These were really pretty good! Would definitely eat again.
While at LuLu’s I picked up one of the other new beers I wanted to try (again, no fair food timing rules!), Lift Bridge’s Pineapple Party.
It was… fine. The pineapple was barely discernable. Not memorable in any way, good or bad.
Earlier in the Fair we had caught the last 2/3rds or so of the History on a Stick show, and we were in the right place at the right time to catch the first part while sampling our new foods.
Bellies full, we headed out of the West End to the Grandstand to do some shopping. After shopping, we found a lovely little garden tucked away to the east of the Grandstand. Long-time followers of my Fair writings know that the gardens are one of my favorite underappreciated aspects of the Fair, but this is one that I never really explored before.
This one featured some amazing dahlias.
Katie got a behind-the-scenes shot. It’s hard work to get this content!
We took a bench break to try Quench’d’s new Lemonade Sorbet Float. The sorbet itself was new last year, and this year they built upon that success.
This was awesome! The lemon rind in the sorbet really stands out, and the added fun of the cherry and cherry-flavored sugar made this truly feel like a fun Fair novelty.
We marveled at the lack of crowds - this is the scene in front of the corn roast!
While sitting there drinking this, we shared the bench with a first-time Fairgoer who was about our age. He asked for recommendations - I’m not sure he understood what he was getting into when he chose our bench! We had a great conversation and sent him away full of ideas. The random conversation with strangers is part of the quintessential Fair experience!
We needed to get up to the North End, and Katie’s favorite way of doing that is the SkyGlider. I usually skip this - me and chairlifts do not get along. But, for date day, I thought I would accompany her this time.
I admit it is fun to get a view of the Fair from above, and if you like chairlifts, this is a no-brainer activity. I tried to relax and enjoy the ride, but after several mid-ride pauses and some stiff breezes, I was pretty happy to get back to terra firma. If you are intrigued by the idea but like me have chairlift issues, I can recommend the Skyride gondolas instead - having a floor under my feet makes all the difference for me! The Space Tower and DNR fire tower are other ways to get a birds-eye view of the Fairgrounds. The Big Wheel as well, but I’m not huge on ferris wheels and it looks like a big time commitment to go all the way around, with all the stops for loading.
Once on the North End, we did some shopping in the tent area behind The Hangar - I needed some new gear. Really happy with our purchases! I got a new Fair shirt and some laptop stickers, and Katie got some stickers too. The hat is inspired by our new state flag, which I love (you can see it in one of the stickers). We also got a fun Fair tote bag for free.
The Pet Pavillion is nearby, so we stopped in to see what breed was featured. They were demonstrating rottweilers seeking out specific smells hidden in those boxes.
It was still before noon, so luckily the pet surgery suite was not active yet - that would have been tough to stomach given our morning diet. I described it to Katie as “you know how when you buy an aerobed after the first time you use it you struggle to get it folded up small enough to get it back in the bag and you’re just stuffing in one part only to have another pop back out? That’s what it’s like, just with bodily organs.” Pet surgery is not gentle. Moving on…
The other North End activity we needed to tackle was the Giant Sing Along. We wandered over there (it’s sort of hidden just south of the North End restrooms) and took our positions at our microphones. The DJ served up two classics: Toto’s Africa (surprisingly hard to sing) and Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk. We had fun belting out the tunes and crossed a Fair item off of Katie’s bucket list.
Next up was the Fine Arts Building. I’d already done one pass through, but Katie hadn’t been yet. Plus, we worked together to complete the Fine Arts Scavenger Hunt! Here are some of our favorite pieces.
Lots of great sculptural art this year, like this wood carving.
This dog is incredible!
This tree was completely made of fine gold wire bent into these shapes.
Leaving Fine Arts, I noticed the line for the Amish donuts at Peachey’s Baking Company was by far the shortest I had ever seen, so I hopped in.
Five minutes later, we had this:
Katie and I agreed to both try it before sharing opinions. We each took our bites in silence, and after a bit, looked at each other. Katie said “Krispy Kreme?”, I said “Yep.”, and that’s that. It’s an oversized Krispy Kreme donut. Now, don’t get me wrong, warm Krispy Kreme donuts are a nice treat, but having lived in the south for many years and able to get them whenever they had their “Hot Donuts Now!” sign lit up, this was nothing novel for us. I’m SO glad I didn’t stand in line an hour or more for these! If you’ve never had a Krispy Kreme donut - well, it’s still not worth waiting in this line more than 10 minutes in my opinion. It’s fine, but there are plenty of other more interesting treats at the Fair.
Part of the charm of the Fair are the random vendors you encounter. After the donut, we popped into the Eco Building, where we happened upon a local company giving away bao bun samples!
This was pretty yummy! Then, back outside, the Idahoan potato folks were previewing their new Tapatio hot sauce infused instant potatoes they are about to release.
These were hot garbage! One bite each then into the trash.
Finally, we stopped by the Komatsu display. No, we’re not in the market for heavy construction equipment. However, we are always up for a selfie inside a giant mining excavator scoop!
That thing goes onto the end of an excavator like the kind they use up on the iron range. If you’ve never seen one of those machines, they are enormous - the tires alone are about 12’ tall.
We also came across this little man, who was using his remote controlled car to pull himself around the Fair. GENIUS!!
Neither of us had heard any of the free live concerts at the Fair yet, so that was a big priority for our date day visit. Checking the schedule, we hustled down to the International Bazaar to catch the McNasty Brass Band.
They were really fun! They did a lot of covers of pop songs which were pretty creative.
After that, we rolled right over to the Leinie Lodge stage for Ben Goldsmith, who was billed as “defying classification” and “genre bending”. Turns out Ben is a teenager from Long Island. He and his band started out with two straight-down-the-middle rock songs, leaving us wondering when the genre would be bending, but then he proceeded to play some songwriter-focused songs on the piano, then he did an acoustic mini-set, then he went back to the electric guitar for a super blues-y song. So, he delivered as promised!
After the show, we popped into Ag so that Katie could see the crop art. She caught a few that I hadn’t noticed on my time through.
Our new state seal.
While Katie was checking out the crop art I stopped by El Burrito Mercado to get the Quesabirria Tacquitos.
El Burrito Mercado is a well-known Mexican restaurant in town who is at the Fair for the first time. These were pretty good! A nice walking snack, the salsa verde and crumbled cheese topping was the highlight for me. The marinated beef filling was a little on the tame side for my liking - it felt like a very Minnesota-ized level of spice. Probably a safe play for the Fair, and these were still pretty tasty.
Yet another tucked-away garden is sitting right outside of the Ag building. This one is a demonstration bog garden.
This is a swamp rose mallow, a type of hibiscus. Huge flowers!
While exploring the garden we stopped by the Minnesota Grown honey food booth to try their Honey Cream Soda Float. It’s been around for a while but I often overlook this stand.
This was interesting! We opted for the classic cream soda variant, which is poured over their honey ice cream, drizzled with honey, and then topped with a foam that somehow is also infused with honey. The foam was especially delicious.
It was mid-afternoon by now, and we had done just about everything that we had hoped to do. All that we had left was to do a quick pass through the animal barns. You never know what you’ll run into as you walk around. We came across this ceremonial dance. There were two groups performing, Kalpulli Huitzillin and Mexica Yolotl (Aztec Danca) dance groups. It looked quite difficult!
We checked out the horse barn, which was mostly populated on this day with llamas and alpacas.
Tip: llamas are bigger with larger banana-shaped ears, alpacas are smaller with smaller, straighter ears. Next year I’d like to plan to be there for the lama costume contest!
It was time to head out. We swung by Tiny Tim’s to get Yaya some mini donuts as a thank you for meeting Henry after school, and the music from the nearby DNR stage lured us in. This is Marv Gorman and Kaatwalk, a folk duo. They did a nice cover of Shallow along with some original songs.
There would be one more bit of excitement before the day was through. We knew that there was some stormy weather heading our way, but the severe weather watch said to expect it at 5pm, a full hour away. While listening to the music, everyone’s phones suddenly lit up with an emergency alert from the county to seek shelter with severe weather imminent!
We were right by our exit so we hustled to the car. As we were pulling out of parking, the stormfront rolled in.
Mother Nature had one more round of fun for the Fair this year! I think that will be the last of it - the forecast looks calm from here on out.
An epic date day at the Fair! We looked up the attendance afterwards - 81,000! That’s SO low for the Fair! We were able to cover a ton of stuff very quickly as a result.
With one final weekend left of the Fair, I feel like we’ve really covered it well this year, but we still have tickets left! So, we will likely head back for our traditional Labor Day visit and sendoff anyhow. Henry has only had one visit, so it’s for him, right?! I DO still need to get some steak tips. And another pork chop. And maybe that paella…
2024 Mid-Fair Check-In