Puyallup Fair

Sunday afternoon, September 25, my Aunt Cathy and I went to the Puyallup Fair.   Instead of trying to find parking near the fair grounds, we rode a bus to the fairgrounds.  The rain started to sprinkle by the time the bus arrived at the fairgrounds.   By the time we bought our tickets it was raining hard.  Neither of us had brought a rain jacket.  We waited and waited... and waited... for the rain to end.  Finally we left the shelter near the ticket booth and went inside the fairgrounds.  IKEA was giving away large plastic bags away and Cathy and I each took one to use as an umbrella.

The buildings were at the opposite end of the fairgrounds.  We were very wet by the time we got inside the first building.   Wouldn't you know it... it quit raining a few minutes after we got inside the building. 

For lunch Cathy and I each ate an Earthquake burger and shared an order of fries.  As you can see the fries are cooked in a glob.

Seeing the high school students artwork on display brought back memories of my high school art classes.

The yellow ducks have grown up since I attended fairs when I was a kid.

I wish they had this when I was a kid!

Cathy and I watched several "mutton busting" contests including the final contest that crowned a winner for the Puyallup Fair.

If I remember right, the contest was open to kids age 6 and younger, and who weighed 60 lbs or less.  The contest is just like the grown up bronco riding.  The goal was to stay on the animal at least 6 seconds and officials score your ride based on how difficult it was to stay on the animal.  If you had a wild animal and stayed on you could score high.

Here is "Buster" warming up the crowd before the contest started.

As you can see, the top three riders were girls.  They look puny but, boy, could they hold onto the sheep!  Sometimes the handlers had to pull them off the sheep after their six seconds had passed.

Mutton Busting video 2:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnm5vtCsims

Mutton Busting video 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6e7ESClGLw


After the mutton busting contest, Cathy and I went over and watched the kid's tractor pulling contest. The contest was for kids 12 and younger.  To make it fair between the older and younger kids, the amount of weight they had to pull was based on their age.  The older kids pulled more weight.

Tractor pull video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMIRVE9_MU

Even though the fair was located in Western Washington near a large population base, the fair still had a small town, ag-based, arts and crafts feel to it.

All in all a nice day at the fair even if we got wet in the beginning. By the end of the fair we had dried out.