A Fair Time Was Had By All

You never know what will be showing or featured at the State Fair. This year we had a record attendance of 1,943,719 people through the gates during the twelve days of the Fair, with the highest number (260,374) on Saturday, September 5th. All three of us were there that day, so we contributed toward the record numbers. But the Fairgrounds are large and even though it's crowded, it's still possible to find places of seclusion.





One of the best things for me at the Fair are the various acts that perform, and we got really lucky on Friday with a performance of Cantus. Cantus is a men's chorus originally started by students at Saint Olaf's college, just south of the Twin Cities. (St Olaf's is known for their music program.) When the original vocalists graduated, they decided to remain together as a group and continue performing. Several members have since retired and been replaced by others, but the group continues to travel, perform, and delight. I'm sharing with you one of their most breathtaking You-Tube videos. This is from an impromptu performance when they intersected with a similar group, Chanticleer, late one night in a bar. The performance is magical. It was a joy to see them perform again at the Minnesota State Fair.

Paul Bunyan was in the house, or at least in the Eco
Building. He's a Minnesota legend, the logger from the
north woods and his trusty blue ox, Babe. 

As you can see above, Paul Bunyan was also at the Minnesota State Fair. He was featured in our Eco building along with exhibits of recycling, local food sourcing, water usage, electronic vehicles (a sweet Tesla and a great motorcycle) and mass transit features and information. It's always a fun building to visit.

DH always loves to look at the food exhibits. I like to look and try to
puzzle out what made one item win blue vs another that looked just
as nice. Guess I'm not a great foodie, but I do find it interesting. 

Do you enjoy baking, knitting, scrapbooking, quilting, or any of a myriad of other crafting activities? If you do, then the State Fair's Creative Activities building is the place to find the best. Here items are brought from all over the state to be judged alongside their peers, and ribbons (and small cash prizes) are awarded. I have a few blue ribbons on my wall from beading entries in past Fairs. It's an unexpected validation to see that ribbon attached to your item, and it's fun to see the talents of so many people.

And here I must end for the day. I'm running out of time and still need to get the photos and links into this blog. I hope you all have a great Thursday. I'll be trying to catch up on some of your posts and comments today while I'm at work. It's always hard to catch up after a week off.