Saturday dawned bright and sunny, and we couldn’t resist the lure of a local agricultural fair. We’ve never been to this neck of the woods (though there seem to be more farms than woods here!), so it seemed to be a perfect opportunity to get a feel for the neighborhood.
So, come along as we explore the Houlton Agricultural Fair.

Before we even hit the midway with all the rides and vendors, we caught the tail end of the Lumber Jack Show.

Besides the log rolling competition, there was some fine chainsaw action, a little wood chopping fun, and a lot of corny jokes. It was a fun way to start the fair.
But the Real Beginning of the fair for us was the Fair Food –

We split the sausage sandwich, so that makes that amazing pile of homemade potato chips (called Ribbon Fries at the fair) a little less troublesome, right? Right? My, they were good!!!
From our artery clogging lunch we headed to the Exhibition Halls. It wasn’t very large, but there were jams and jellies, local art and photography, and a small section for crafts and quilts – 🙂

From the Exhibition Hall we meandered over to the Lawnmower Races.

Wasn’t quite the Tim the Tool Man idea of a souped-up mower, but those boys sure seemed to have a good time “racing” around the track!
Back to the entertainment tent where we witnessed Alexandria the Great escape out of a straight jacket while being bound with chains.

In about 3 minutes, no less. Quite impressive. You could tell she was a trained professional!
Next up was Dan Grady & His Marionettes . At first it was a little odd since he wasn’t behind a curtain or anything, but he did an amazing job with his marionettes. One of them was this flying trapeze puppet –

This is my attempt at a close-up action shot….

“E” for effort?
He had these triple synchronized clowns

that were pretty impressive until they started doing this….

Ok, still impressive, but hey, there are KIDS in the audience. It was pretty freaky!
We left the entertainment area before the Karaoke started, and headed to the livestock area. There were pigs and lambs and goats and chickens and bunnies. My favorites, though, were the alpacas –


There are a couple of alpaca farms close by, so you might see more of these guys this month!
And I couldn’t resist this shot of the bovines –

Someone needs to figure out how to have us walk down a CENTER isle so we have a slightly better view of the cows! 🙂
But apparently the BIG event of the day was the Demolition Derby.
Before –

After –

After the After –

These guys were in the “sedan class” (and had their radiators on their roofs), and are getting ready for the “consolation” round.

Really, this is fun? I confess I’m still trying to understand both the appeal of watching cars crashing into each other and the appeal of actually being the driver of one of the cars. But judging by the amount of hooting and hollering going on around us, the crowd was loving it! Everyone seemed to have their favorites – and the kids behind us were rooting for their MOM who was driving a car in the compact class. If nothing else, there was some great community spirit going on here!

We had a great day at the Houlton Fair. I managed to steer Gary away from the midway (and another order of those ribbon fries) as we walked back to the truck, and by the time we got back to our rig, we were blessed with this beautiful sunset –

Thanks for coming along! Alpacas and Demolition Derbies. Who knew?

Pssst….guess what’s coming up in a couple of weeks? The Maine Potato Blossom Festival! Maybe they’ll have those ribbon fries there too…… 🙂