After being so impressed by the Ankeny Fair, we had to check out the Iowa State Fair. When we first found out we were moving to Iowa, I did what every sane person would do; I googled things to do in Iowa. I had never been to the state prior to our move, but one thing that consistently popped up on every list was…….. The Iowa State Fair.
After reading more about it, I learned that it is known for some pretty amazing food. Several people said that they actually go solely for the food. People will buy multiple tickets just so that they can go there for dinner throughout the 10 days it is in town. Through my extensive research, I learned about a world famous treat you can get here, which is fried butter.
This concept was very puzzling to me, because I could not figure out how you would fry butter without melting it. But after asking many locals, they have told me this is a real thing! I was looking forward to trying this amazing new delicacy, that sounded like a sweet bread with melted butter in the center. One person told me it is like the center of a cinnamon roll. Sadly, right before we went to the fair, my world came crashing down. I was informed they no longer had this at the fair!!!
Nonetheless, we still ventured out to the fair. We did get to try some amazing food. I thought as far as fair food goes it was not way overly priced for the portions they gave you. As usual, I wish I took more pictures but I did not capture any of the bucket of cookies, or the foot long corn dog, or the fried pickle wrapped in pastrami or the tachos (tater tot Nachos). While I often wish I took more pictures of activities that we do, I know that it’s only because I’m too busy living in the moment to stop and take a picture, and I can live with that.
We started out on the farm, in the “little hands” section. This is where kids get to help out on a make believe farm, highlighting how and where our food is made. Our kids loved this and really got excited about having a large garden and possibly some animals on our land some day.
After the little hands, we went to see the baby animals! This helped to grow that little spark from the first section. Joey especially fell in love with every animal he saw. He wanted to bring them all home with him.
One of the baby sheep even shared a birthday with Benny! He thought that was so cool. Apparently you can text a number to sign up for updates, and if one of the animals are giving birth while you are there you can see it! We sent the text but mama sheep wasn’t ready yet.
After all that walking and all that deep fried fair food, we headed off to the rides. I think the kids were originally so excited about the rides, but ended up enjoying it the least. They weren’t bad rides, but they were very expensive. So the tickets we purchased lasted about 10 minutes, and we bought the largest package they had. The big kid rides and little kids rides where very far apart, which meant we could only keep 2 kids happy at a time.
By the time we finished with that, we had about 5 hours at the fair and the kids were exhausted. Probably because one was just getting over a stomach bug, and as we would soon find out, the other three where about to join in the fun. If Joey didn’t have it before the fair I would have thought it was food poisoning.
Part of the reason for the delay in this post has been the last 24 hours at our house! 5 out of 6 of us have come down with the stomach bug. Somehow I dodged the bullet this time! Luckily it has been quick moving. Once everyone is back in shape, I will continue my search for this mysterious FRIED BUTTER!