SURPRISE! Day off and the STATE FAIR!

Happy Valentines day :)

I found out that I got the day off, so I decided to go to the state fair! Were there other, more productive things I could have done? Absolutely. Still, I have never been to a state fair and I really wanted to go!

The fair was in Tampa, so about 2:30 hours from my apartment. I equated it to driving to Columbus from my house. No big deal! I decided to leave around 10 AM and knew I wanted to be home by 9 PM. That meant that by the time I ran some errands on my way to the fair, I had a total of 5 hours to poke around.

Let me start by saying WOW! I was not anticipating the size of the fair! There were tons of expo halls, an entire turn of the century village, and two midways! Not to mention the barns for all of the fair animals. I have some photos to chronicle my journey:

I entered through Gate 1, how exciting, lol. My first stop was the main Expo hall where they basically had a business expo running. Samples of lotions, video demonstrations, etc. It was nice to wander around here for a bit, but I wanted to get outside to the real "fair" stuff so I didn't spend too long inside.

Because I got to the fair at 1PM, I was pretty hungry, but I wanted to make sure I picked the right food, so I wandered a lot before eventually buying something to eat. I started on the main midway. It was crazy! Lots of rides (I didn't feel the need to ride anything) and even more people yelling from their game booths. Some guy was yelling about my "Cheer" shirt (it was a choir shirt, lol) and wanted me to come win a prize. I just pulled out my map and kept walking. I didn't find anything I wanted to eat on the midway, so I moved on.

I ended up in the craft hall next. There were lots of different vendors, many of them selling things I've seen at Yankee Peddler, Shaker Woods, etc. Then I found my favorite booth ever... LOG CABIN TEA CO.!!!!! They were at Shaker Woods and I bought some really yummy tea from them. Turns out they were selling cups of iced tea that you could get refills on ALL DAY! I bought a 16oz. cup for $2 and for the rest of the day I could refill it for $1 each time. I ended up refilling it twice. One of the refills is in my fridge waiting for lunch tomorrow -yum-.

Then I wandered through the hall where they had the ribbon winners for different arts, crafts, plants, fish, wine, etc. There was a sand sculpture at the entrance.

Here are some of my favorite exhibits from inside:

Cool, huh?




Then I went to Cracker Country, the living history museum of Florida in the 1900s. It was similar to Hale Farm/Yankee Peddler. There were hands on exhibits, walk through areas, and some items for sale. I got to make a postcard on a printing press FOR FREE!!!

This post is getting long, so I will continue in a second post in a moment...