September 17th - North County Fair

North of us, there is another town called Arcata.  They had their annual street fair.  In the town is a block-square park.  Vendors and artisans lined both sides of the surrounding streets with booths.  Some food, lots of great handcrafted items and clothing.  This looked like a real hippie-artist thing.

There was the annual Samba parade around the square.

We walked around and looked at a lot of cool stuff.  Of course, we had to buy some hot sauce and jelly.  We stopped in a tavern that had a lot of old items around the bar and a couple of surprises.  A couple of the buildings have ancient neon lights which was cool. 

On our way out was a girl band which played music from the 40s.  Guitar, double bass, and woodwinds/brass.  They were pretty good.  Arcata is an interesting town.

http://www.northcountryfair.org/

We had lunch at a combination cider and meat pie place.  We even brought home a couple of empanadas and pot pies.

By the way, completely unassociated, Baseball postseason started today.  I'm excited.  Just sayin'.

This was painted into the street up where I parked the beast

Lots of people

Town square

Amazing art masks

The parade

Everett's

no, wait, what???

Awesome band

Booty

Empanadas!!

Cider bar

March 7th - A Day At The Fair

As most county and state fairs are held in the summer, The Imperial County fair is held in the end of winter.  It makes sense, who would go to the fair for a good time if it's 120 degrees?

It was a Tuesday near the end of the fair.  Just needed to get out and do something, so we went to see what it was like.  It's not a big fair, the fairgrounds are permanent buildings on the north side of El Centro by the airport and the beginning of the sister town of Imperial.  Entrance was pretty cheap.  There is a senior discount I qualify for, a couple of bucks, but we didn't see that until we had just gotten our tickets, and the girl said we were out of luck.  $2.00, oh well. 

We took Janie with us.  She was going to be moving on soon. 

We walked around and I tried to take some pictures.  There was an art exhibit and a law-enforcement exhibit.  Lots of crafts by local schools and colleges.  We came across an exhibit by the Early Day Gas Engine and Tractor Association Branch 22.  Laurie knew most of the presenters there as it is a club her mom and dad have been associated with for a very long time. 

A couple of guys in bad superheroes costumes were going around on unicycles.  One was tall and the other normal size.  they juggled pins between them and told jokes and basically clowned around.  That was fun to watch.  There was a beer pavilion but the most exotic beer was Sam Adams.  We found the beer garden where the locals of Humble Farmer and Pentagonal as well as Mike Hess from San Diego had offerings.

We didn't try any of the rides, but had some of the food sample.  we had some great street tacos from one of the booths.

I haven't been to very many state or county fairs, but attended the San Diego County fair many, many times.  This was just another county fair.  A bit of diversion and fun.  Worth the meager cost.

Entering the boardwalk

This might have been a fun show, especially for the kiddies.  It wasn't happening while we were there.

One of the permanent buildings

Branch 22.  I've seen this guy many times at many shows.

Fun guys, but not mushrooms.

Beer Garden