Ohio State Fair

Ferris wheel. Stuffed animals. Real animals likes cows, pigs, sheep, and rabbits. Elephant ears. Petting zoo. Games that are impossible to win. The heat of summer. Gravitron. And of course there was Grizzly, the 1100 pound big. The list goes on and on, and there is only one place you can find all of these together, the famous state fairs. Today I made it to the Ohio State Fair, great timing to be in Columbus for a couple days.

State Fairs are a staple of USA culture. I’m not sure if this trip would have been complete without attending one somewhere along the way. I wonder how much state fairs differ from state to state. I’m guessing they can’t be that much different, maybe if you go to the Alaska or Hawaii state fairs. They are all modeled the same. I would love to be a foreigner and come to a USA state fair and see what it’s like. I just can’t imagine fairs in other countries having the same random collection of ______ (I can’t even find a word for it, I don’t know how to describe the state fair). Where else can you get a hot beef sundae? Or win a three foot tall stuff animal.

The smells alone at a state fair or something in itself. The mix between farm animals, straw, manure, hot dog stands, cotton candy, funnel cake, and sweaty people is one of a kind. Then you add a summer temperature of 90 degrees and thick air and you’ve got yourself a smell that you can’t find anywhere else in the world.