Iowa State Fair!

It's Wednesday, so that means I'm just about recovered from the awesome experience of attending the Iowa State Fair. It was everything I had hoped for -- bluegrass, fried things, old architechture, and lots of the other bits of America that I don't hate. I got two new states out of this trip (the other one being Nebraska), and Chris managed to check off Iowa as his 49th state. We didn't get a picture because the western state line is over a river. Ah, well.

For everyone's viewing pleasure, we stuck together a quick slide show of some of our pictures. I didn't even get pictures of lots of the cool stuff we saw. They have separate horse, cattle, and sheep buildings, and one building that just housed pregnant animals and ones that had recently given birth -- they showed videos on big screens of goats being born from the day before, and we saw some piglets that were just a couple of hours old. People are just a whole lot more involved in livestock in Iowa. It sounds obvious, but there you have it. Another thing they take very seriously is 4-H. An entire building was devoted to 4-H projects and shows -- the canoe you see in the video was built by a 13-year-old girl (with a little help from her dad). I guess when you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got a little extra time on your hands.

I'm so glad we went -- it's probably the best fair I'll ever see in my life.


A couple words about the video. If you can, turn your sound on for the full bluegrass experience. Also, that big yellow cow? The one that looks like it's made out of butter? It is. They also had a butter Harry Potter and lots of his butter accessories, including butter Hedwig, a butter Fat Lady portrait, and a butter Care of Magical Creatures book. Is there NOTHING butter can't do? USA! USA! USA!