The event was held at the Monroe fairgrounds. The voucher for the event gave us free entry as well as wrist bands that got us on all the rides for free. We took full advantage of the opportunity and got right to the serious business of playing on rides.
It usually costs $8 each to "walk on water". Free!
Walking on Water was one of the first things we did at the fair. The lines were short, in fact our family took up much of it. (It would not be that way later in the day when the wait was over 45 minutes long. We should have gone twice in a row while the lines were short!) Soon everyone was in their plastic bubble and rolling around on the water.
Crawling around is easy, trying to stay upright is much more challenging.
See Anastaya in the pink shirt in the upper right? She was up for just a minute and then...
splash down! You can see William on the right upside down.
Even Dode got in on the action. You can see Anastaya taking a fall in the #3 ball. It looked like a lot of work to me so I was the photographer.
Go cart rides were free too. The track was tiny, the kids never got to go straight. Miriam thought it was a lot of fun to drive the electric cars. One little boy had a terrible time steering. Every time he crashed, they would shut down everyone's car with a kill switch. It made for a lot of sitting around.
It would cost $10 each to do this zip line on a normal fair day. Free! The suiting up for the ride took a several minutes,
getting ready to go
The actual zip took less than 5 seconds. Maybe we should charge $10 a ride for our zip line! We offer a longer ride.
Enjoying her free pony ride.
After enjoying the rides that would normally cost extra at the fair, we explored the carnival. Miriam and William loved the fun house.
The slide at the end of one of the kiddie rides looked impressive but ended up being disappointing. The kids had to push themselves along to get down the slide.
They had a mini drop ride. William, Elizabeth, Anastaya and I went on it while Miriam did her pony ride. It dropped us six times. After the first time, William said, "I hate this ride!" After the sixth ride he said, "I'm never going on that ride again!" I thought it was fun and reminded me of the Tower of Terror without the long wait and all the Disney decorations.
On the drive there, the kids wanted to know what I was most excited about doing at the fair. They thought I was joking when I said, "The food!" I love unhealthy fair food: kettle corn, elephant ears, hand dipped corn dogs. Bring it on, I'm game!
$8 for a bag of popcorn almost as tall as she is!
Once the lines started getting long, Dode took Miriam to the mini golf course and the rest of us went in to play Bingo.
Within 30 minutes, both William and Anastaya had each won prizes, Evergreen State Fair branded apparel. Along with winning apparel, you got to enter your name into a drawing to win a $25 gift certificate to the fair. A few days later I received a call. Anastaya had won. They would send the tickets to our local union hall, which one did I want them to send it to? I told our friend who gave us the tickets that he was welcome to claim the prize, we'd done our fair experience for the year!
One thing the fair does very well is hide access to drinking water. I'd brought a one liter water bottle and I can't guess how many trips I made to the bathroom to refill it for our thirsty family. I was sure wishing I'd thought to bring more water bottles. I guess I figured there'd be drinking fountains for the kids to drink from and Dode and I would share the bottle. They don't offer water anywhere, even the fountains were turned off. The only way to get free water (they sell bottled water at the vendors), was to use the lukewarm water at the bathroom sink. It was wet but not very refreshing.
Six hours after arriving, the lines at all the attractions were extremely long. The warm sun had done it's job well heating up the asphalt so we were getting baked from above and below. But, the worst part was they started blaring heavy metal music. All the screaming in the music pushed us right out of the fair to our car, where we could relax and instead enjoy the bickering of tired siblings. You can imagine what the music was like when that was a relief!
It wasn't a full fair, more like a carnival, so we didn't get to oogle the animals and the handicrafts (my 2nd favorite thing to do at the fair after the food). But, I'm counting it as our trip to the fair this year and the kids better be as well! Just with the little bit of food we bought and shared, it cost us $50.
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