Howdy, Folks!

You guessed it, I went to the state fair this past weekend . . . just not the Texas one. :) Saturday, I went to the North Carolina State Fair. In spite of the lack of a ginormous cowboy greeting everyone with the phrase, "Howdy, folks!" it was a great fair! As I've mentioned before, I love fairs & festivals, so a state fair is the ultimate treat. I enjoy looking at all the displays, especially the arts & crafts people bring. One building (I think it was the hobbies & crafts building) had all kinds of projects people had done that were judged for the fair. One entire section was devoted to scrapbooking pages. I spent a lot of time looking over their pages in admiration & trying to get some ideas for when I get to scrapbook all of my travels. Two of the pages were on Washington, DC, so that was fun. :) Next to this section was a huge grouping of homemade cards. This was fun to see, too, since I've dabbled a little in making cards. I think my favorite was a Christmas card (shocking, I know). On the cover, it had a crab standing on a beach with the phrase, "Merry Christmas, from Sandy Claws." Pretty punny, but it made me laugh! :)

There was another section on gardens that was really pretty with lots of different water features.

Later in the day, I met up with one of my friends from here. We found the places with the free food samples - always a favorite. :) Never before have I seen a $5000 turkey, but I did that day! We went through the building with all the 4H or FFA champion animals, and there it was . . . the grand champion turkey. Now, not being a turkey expert, it looked like any other white turkey to me. And, as sacrilege as it might sound to the kid that raised it, I immediately thought of Thanksgiving! YUM!! :) One pin had a pig and about 10 adorable, round piglets. They were TOO cute! On the way out of there, we stopped to watch the goat judging, which is incredibly similar to dog judging. Some of them were really pretty. Who knew? It was kinda funny to watch these poor people trying to lead stubborn goats around a ring. After riding one insane, flippy ride - not really sure if I was upside down or right side up more on that one - we staggered over to the petting zoo. I thought I got a picture of a goat resting on top of a cow laying down, but I'm not exactly sure what happened. It was hilarious!

All in all, it was a great day. I was very impressed with the fair here! But, the next day, I realized how out of shape I've gotten since leaving the DC area. While there, I was used to walking around for hours on end while doing touristy stuff. Apparently, I've lost that because my legs were SORE on Sunday!! :) I did snap a quick picture of the leaves starting to change on Sunday before I headed home, though.

Now, how pretty is that?!? Trees like this one lined a good part of my drive home, which made it very enjoyable. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing how pretty the trees get over the next few weeks!