Washington State Fair 2018

Long day today! And now not a lot of time to write about it, because I got back in the door at 7:30 and only just finished captioning the photos -- rather to my surprise, numbering 52 shots, actually a record high out of the now five times I've gone to that fair since 2009. My last time was in 2015, with the very same people: my sister Gina, and her work friend Jennifer. I asked Jennifer today how old she is. She told me she is exactly two months older than Gina. They were both born in the summer of 1971. Anyway, you can read more detail by clicking through to the full photo set on Flickr, and reading the captions. For now, here in the blog, I will tell you this: you see that shot above? We're all eating a Fisher Scone, the first thing we ate, soon after entering the fair grounds. Fisher Scones must be a big deal, because even on a weekday morning like today when the fair is pretty slow with patrons (which very much worked in our favor), they had a pretty good line going when Gina decided we should go over there and get one. And, they had an industrial kitchen oven in there, making tons of them at a time. I don't think I have ever had a scone so fresh, so perfectly warm, soft and delicious. Nothing else I ate all day came even close to that truly perfect scone. We didn't ride any rides -- not even the slide, as Jennifer and I did in 2015. I had withdrawn $100 in cash for the day, and spent $48, depositing $52 back into my bank account after busing back. Using a 2-for-1 coupon and then splitting the cost of one ticket with Gina, only $7 of that went toward the entry cost. Aside from another $3 I paid to play a game of Bingo (which only Gina won), the other $38 was spent on only their (of course) ridiculously overpriced food, although $2 of that was for a bottle of water. So, make that $36: for a piroshky, a deep fried Snickers, and a dish of deep fried macaroni and cheese. Actually I think I'm forgetting something else I spent money on. I can't remember what it was. I just know I had $52 of my $100 when I returned. We all entered right around the time the fair opened at 10:30 a.m.. I had slept in until about 6:30, roughly one hour later than I usually sleep. Walked downtown after withdrawing the cash, to catch the Sound Transit #578 bus to Puyallup Station at 8:57, which arrived at 10:15 and then I walked the single mile from there to the fairgrounds. I caught the 5:35 bus back, which means we spent about six hours and forty minutes wandering around the fair. That was the perfect amount of time, actually, to look at local art and livestock and eat some truly crappy junk food. Except for the scones. The scones were excellent. I don't think I've even seen Jennifer another time since I first met her going to the fair in 2015. I like her; she's a lot of fun. We had so much fun in 2015 that it was Gina who said she wanted to relive that day, and come again just the three of us, without spouses. It seemed kind of low-key this morning at first, but then we were all making each other laugh quite a lot. I'm really glad we all took the day off of work and did this. A lot of those 52 photos I took today, by the way, were really very good photos. [posted 9:40 pm] [older puyallup fair posts]