The Fair was Glorious and Sharon's Visit was Fabulous - A Quick Reach-out

Hello everyone, and welcome back to real life! I dropped Sharon off at the airport yesterday morning and was busy at the shop working with Chickie, and today I'm deep into laundry and housecleaning to recover my house after a multi-day house guest. And it was GOOD. Very good. We had a total blast, in spite of wicked hot temperatures. Crazy hot! 

I think this was Saturday, but it's hard to say for sure. Despite 
the extreme heat and reduced attendance on Sunday because 
of it, we still had the 6th best attendance in our history. We 
LOVE our State Fair. It's tradition. Many of my nieces and 
nephews came by at least once, a few of them twice, and 
of course Sharon and I were here three days and DH was 
here on Sunday. Yeah - we're crazy - but it's crazy in a 
really good way. 

Sharon and I walked the Fair from one end to the other, filling out our Fair maps for this year. They changed five of the ten stations this year, and we had to hunt hard for some of them, but eventually, we did find them all over our two days of solo travel. I tracked my steps, and we did more than 10 miles on Friday and Saturday (closer to 12 on Saturday), and more than eight on Sunday when DH joined us and it was SO beastly HOT that the Fairgrounds had about 1/5th the number of people it should have had for a normal "day before closing" crowd. 

Entering the Fairgrounds from the Transit Center, 
everyone (practically) enters under this old archway 
which used to be over the old entry, many decades ago. 

We ate a lot, drank a LOT (water was essential), and looked at everything at least once. We caught up on our lives, I watched humorous cat videos of her two cats who were just kittens last year, and as usual, we never ran short of things to talk about or places to go. I did buy a new skirt and a new dress in the International Bazaar (I'll be hand-washing them today to get them ready to wear), and we had an absolutely FABULOUS sirloin steak with mushrooms dinner at Lindey's on Friday night, and a nice, comfortable dinner (in air conditioning - YIPPEE) on Monday night at Olive Garden. But we certainly didn't starve at the State Fair. I was careful about what I ate, but not ridiculous, and I drank A LOT of water because of the heat. I was pretty happy with my choices, all told. 

On Monday we all joined up at the Renaissance Festival for a hot day of merriment. We all tapped out around 2:00-2:30 pm, Chickie returning home to her own place, and DH, Sharon and I returning home to shower and head to Olive Garden for a nice, air conditioned atmosphere and meal. Sharon had LOTS of left-over food to take back to Denver with her. It all fit into her suitcase, and I'm sure arrived without problems. I know last year everything traveled beautifully, and will trust that it did so again this year. 

As for the Fair - it wasn't a record attendance year because the heat was brutal towards the end of the run, but it was a good 1,835, 826 total number of attendees at this year's Fair - keeping us at the top of the daily attendance nationwide. Friday was 190,290, Saturday was 200,170 and Sunday was 141,326. Sunday SHOULD have been much closer to Saturday, but it was 97 degrees out, and the buildings were stifling. We hopped from shade to shade, and hit the misters and the ice cream. I got my non-dairy iced cream shakes two of the three days. I ate my Danielson's Onion Rings all three days, and I had Nautilus Bowls for two of those days for something yummy and cool. But the heat was brutal. Still, we survived and had a wonderful time. 

I haven't had a chance to go through my photos yet, but I'll get some into my next post, promise. I'm running tight on time today - I need to get over to the swimming pool. Time to work off the two pounds I gained from Sharon's visit - LOL. Have an excellent day - I'll (hopefully) catch up on some of my friends' postings today if I have a bit of spare time. Slava Ukraini!