Alaska State Fair: Part 1

It's been a while. Our apologies.

We were lucky enough to get to Alaska in time for the state fair. The fair takes place about 45 miles northeast of Anchorage, in Palmer, which is near Wasilla (yeah, that's right, up there in Palin country). Palmer and Wasilla are in the Mat-Su Valley (named for the Matanuska and Susitna Rivers), which is Alaska's primary agricultural region. The federal government sent a bunch of midwestern farmers up there when times got tough in the lower 48 back in the 1930s. According to the crack staff over at Wikipedia, the Mat-Su Valley is "known for producing huge vegetables during a 100-day growing season." More on that later.

Apparently, the state fair is the Ron Burgundy of Alaska - it's kind of a big deal. Traffic started backing up about 5 miles outside of Palmer:


We eventually made it. If you don't believe me, then how do you explain THIS:


The first big event of our day was Fred Scheer's Lumberjack Show, which consisted primarily of several burly twentysomethings running around with saws and yelling "YO HO!!!!" Pretty awesome if you ask me.

A sawing contest:

A climbing contest:

And some logrolling:

Our next big stop, which came highly recommended by the folks back in Anchorage, was the Elks Lodge's Rat Race:

It immediately became apparent that this was not so much a rat race as it was rat roulette. This here bald fella would send that multi-colored wheel a spinnin':

Shortly thereafter, he would lift the big stuffed mouse/rat, revealing this little guy:

The rat, not sure what to think of all of this, would then scamper around the wheel until finally dropping into one of the holes. Whoever put their quarters on that color won more quarters. All for charity, of course. Somebody call PETA (Lindsay couldn't - she was too busy winning quarters).

Off to the farm exhibits. Wikipedia isn't joking about Mat-Su vegetables - here is the cabbage that set the world record this year:

World record or not, this llama was not impressed:

Since "Molly Cow" is one of our fat cat's aliases, we got awfully excited when we saw this sign:

We spent several hours searching the fairgrounds for Molly, but, as it turned out, the cow in the picture was really named "Molly Cow" (who would've thought?). Lindsay was devastated, but she made the best of the situation with a little kissy-face:

As I write this, Molly Cow is resting comfortably on Lindsay's lap. Lindsay has pled not guilty to one count of cattle thievin', so I have not taken a picture.