Catching Up - Labor Day Weekend

I know - I'm approaching 6 months behind.

Like last year, we spent Labor Day weekend in Syracuse, NY with Ed & Jeanette.  Since it's been so long, I don't remember all of the details, so this is going to be pretty short.

The main reason we go (other than to visit them and Ed's family, of course), is to go to the AMAZING Great New York State Fair (GNYSF).  I won't go into how completely wonderful the GNYSF is because I did so at length last year.  But we did do some new stuff, so I'll talk about a couple of those.

First, being from the south, I'm constantl being ribbed about deep fried everything.  BUT, I can honestly say that the vast mojority of strange deep-fried things I've seen and eaten have been since we've been living North of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Our first summer in PA I saw deep-fried Oreos at a hoidy-toidy horse show.  Nothing, though, and I mean NOTHING, can compare to the GNYSF.  If you can eat it, you'll probably find it deep fried here.  In fact, and I'm not kidding about this, some booths have signs telling you that they'll deep-fry any kind of food you bring to them.  Just check out these pictures for just a sampling of the variety.  Ed and I tried as many of these as we could, and of cours most were great. 

"Dr. Vegetable: Fresh Fried Veggies"  That's a classic!

Make sure to look really closely at the bottom of this sign.  It says "You Bring It, We Fry It!"  Fantastic!

That's right - deep fried pineapple.

Here's me with my 1' long corn dog.  It wasn't as good as it sounds or looks.

Despite all of this, it is so rare to see an obese person at the GNYSF (even though 10's of thousands of people go each day), that you really notice it when you do see one because they stand out so much. 

My favorite part of the fair is all of the animals there for the live stock competitions. I took Jackson in there to pet some of the animals.

Here are a few other random pictures. 

Sarah can't walk past one of these without stopping for a pictures.

If this fair was in the south this board would have to be a lot bigger . .  and they'd have to have more markers.

Jackson won a blue ribbon for being the cutest baby!  Well, not really, but he should have.  Actually, he was amazingly good all day.  We got to the fair around 10 or 11 am and came home after it closed, at around 10 pm, and he never fussed for a second the entire day.  When he finally got tired at the end of the day, he just went to sleep, and even slept through his 1st concert - MC HAMMER!!!  Yeah, it was awesome. 

There was also a circus tent with lots of animals.  The best was the giraffes that you could feed.  Jackson was a tiny bit hesitant, but fed them anyway.  He's was great about it.  Sarah was more scared than he was.

Sarah and Jeanette how ribbons for their goat-milking skill.   

Of course, as in every state fair, they have tons of rides.  I have better pictures than this one, but none capture the pure terror in Ed's sister like this one.  Cracks me up everytime!

They also have lots of these ridiculous "carny"-type attractions.  totally ridiculous, but funny.

Last but not least, every year they have some amazing sand sculpture.  This one is of the Navy ship that was just built (I forgot the name), with some of the steel for the bow coming from World Trade Center Steel.