Texas State Fair

This last week we've been working very hard (especially Justin, who's been staying after school until after 9 every night to study!), so we rewarded ourselves with a trip to the Texas State Fair. We went with our good friends Becky and Joey Kayne.

This was our first time at the fair and we loved it. The fair is mostly about eating fried food, but they also have lots of animals (people can enter their animals into competitions, and they also have a petting zoo and animal shows), many many carnival games and rides, shops and other vendors, a car show, the Cotton Bowl etc. The fair is a HUGE deal here in Dallas, and so I've tried to go into some detail to let our family and friends know all about it.

Here we are in front of the very large "Big Tex." (52 feet tall, made of fiber glass and wears shirts and pants made out of cloth and demin)

Pictures of our fried food samplings:

Things we ate at the fair (in the order that we ate them; also note that we usually took samplings of each food, we did not each eat full order):

1. Fletcher's famous Corny Dogs (top left). According to Wikipedia, Neil and Carl Fletcher introduced their corn dog ("Corny Dog") at the Texas State Fair sometime between 1938 and 1942. These were the biggest disappointment of the night--WAY too greasy, too much corn batter and it was very bland. Hot Dog on a Stick does a much better corn dog.
2. Country Fried Pork Chips (not pictured). These were thin slices of pork loin, breaded in shake-n-bake (or similar), and fried. They tasted great and were very tender, to our surprise.
3. Fried Snickers (top center). Justin was wanting to try this since he heard about it last year at the fair, and he said it did not disappoint. They take a snickers bar, plop it in a sweet batter, and fry it up. I've heard Justin explain how good this was to other people several times, and I think that his favorite part about the dish was that "the chocolate from the candy bar melts into the batter" and somehow it makes it taste so good. I didn't care for it, but I don't like Snickers. This was Justin's favorite.
4. Funnel Cake (top right). Becky had never had funnel cake, so that was what she had to get.
5. Fernie's deep fried peaches and cream (bottom left). Peaches are coated in a concoction of graham cracker crumbs with cinnamon, ginger, coconut, then fried and served with raspberry sauce, whipped cream, and a vanilla butter cream icing for dipping. This was delicious, and my absolute favorite. Justin didn't like it, but he doesn't like fruit desserts. This won the Best Taste award.
6. Fried Green Goblins (bottom center). Description is included in the picture. Justin said they were nothing special, but the name begs for you to try them.
7. Fried Butter (bottom right). A pat of butter is folded into a piece of dough and then fried. You can drizzle these with honey and cinnamon--which we did. Basically it's a fried scone with melted butter inside and very good, but still just a scone. This won the creativity award from the fried food competition.

Here are the pictures from the petting zoo and the pig races...

There were lots of little babies, and I was surprised by the different types of animals they had. Seriously, who has ever heard of giraffes, zebras, and yaks at a petting zoo?

And the fair at night...

The fair covers 277 acres, which makes a lot of room for the arcade/carnival games and rides. We didn't play any games or ride any rides, but next year we will ride the "Texas Star" (the ferris wheel lighted in blue--it's the largest ferris wheel in North America at 212 feet; it was chilly and windy, so we'll do this next year when the weather is better).