Well, L.A. proved us wrong agian. The fair was huge, and there were probubly hundreds of thousands of people there.
Most of you know that Jason and I are cheapscates, and Jason, sticking to his full Dutch heritage, hates to spend money, period. A fair of any kind costs money, usually lots of it. We always find free parking, wherever we go, always. At the L.A. county fair you have to use their parking lots to attend the fair, the parking is $10-15. The fair costs $15 each for us to get in (Sean was free), so before Jason even set foot inside the gate, he had spent $40. I had to buy him an $8 beer just to calm him down ;).
Speaking of beer, the first thing you see when you get into the L.A. county fair is a giant Budweiser tent. Beer is sold at every vendor all over the fair. In WA we are used to beer being confined to the "beer garden", not in L.A., the whole fair was the beer garden. Everybody was walking around with beer, mom's pushing strollers, grandma's with walkers, everybody! There must be different "open beverages" law's or something.
Liquor is not controlled by the state in CA so you can buy alcohol at every grocery store at all hours. CA is actually a perfect place to live if you are an alcoholic, weekends, after 5:00, no problem here, they even run specials at the local grocery.
Jason is a bit of an import beer snob, so he was outraged by the $8 Bud.
A really great part of the fair was a section with historic trains. They must love old trains in So Cal, they seem to be everywhere. These trains are huge! They are giant old steam engines, Sean loves them. Jason is 6'2", look at how big that wheel is!
and a deisel
I had to leave Sean here overnight, we just gave him a pillow and some crackers, he was in the same place the next moring.
This is the Union Pacific "Big Boy", it is the heaviest seam engine ever built, it weighs over 1 million pounds (that's without the pregnant woman climbing on the front of it). It was built in 1941, and according to what we read, it would crush current day train tracks due to it's weight. (the train, not the pregnant woman!)
At the Puallup fair there are about three places you can get a fair turkey leg, at the L.A. county fair there are no less than 25, it is crazy! This grill is huge, and it is full of turkey legs. Looking at this will either make you sick or hungary, I'm still not sure how I feel.
Jason however, is quite happy about it. I laid in bed last night and thought...hey, where are all the turkey breasts? Where are the rest of all these turkeys. I asked Jason and he said they are at the grocery store on sale, let's go!
The turkey legs were $8.75, and the giant corn dogs were $10! Now grated they were giant, they are still just hot dogs! We decided to get a turkey leg and corn dog and share them as a family. After polishing off this meal we were still hungary, Jason and I were perfectly happy to be half full, however Sean looked up at us and said "more hot dog please". So off went Jason and another corn dog for the Brouwer's it is. (well he did say please)
I have been looking forward to taking Sean on his first fair rides. He is finally tall enough, so I took him on a little bumble bee ride.
He loved it.
This was Jason and Sean's favoret ride at the fair, plus it was free.
Sean cried when we went to get him out of the truck. We had to borrow a shoe horn and the jaws of life to get him out. Jason was hard to get out too.
Nap time
There was a G scale model train display at the fair too. This is an amazing train set up. Any of you with toddler boys know that this was the main attraction at the fair!
It was really amazing, there are waterfalls, lakes, bridges, towns, cars and trucks (moving) and tons of trains.
Sean walked along the model yelling "toot toot" "toot toot"!!! "there'a a train, there's a train"!!! "Look mom, look mom" Toddlers have to say everything two times, at least.
This may look like a cute picture pose, but it is actually my toddler restraint system.
Ok, the animals at the L.A. fair are far different than the Puyallup. At the Puyallup, the animals are brought there to be judged and shown, at the L.A. fair they just put a few farm animals out to show kids what they actually look like. There are about 4 cows, 5 sheep, and so on, they are all in one barn and the kids just get to look at them trough the fences. There appeared to be no 4 H or Futer Farmers of America or anything. There was a petting farm, but it cost $3. Jason just walked right past it and said, "We'll just take him to Petco".
I am not sure what these are, but I am pretty sure they are from south of the border.
Apparently gambling is not controlled by the state either because horse races were at the fair too. The horse race track is situated in the middle of the fairgrounds, it is free to watch but not so free if your betting. We have never been to a horse race before so we thought it would be neat to drop in and see.
Horses are really amazing to watch.
During the 10 min we had to wait for the horses to begin racing Sean was a little bored. I'm pretty sure his finger is up Jason's nose here.
We tried to get some pictures that would show the magnitude of the crowds at the fair. There were just too many people!
I had to start using the stroller as a battering ram just to get back to the gate.
Well there you go, our day at the L.A. county fair. It was a good experience, and we had a good time. By the time we got back to our car (parked no less than two football fields away) (thats what you get for $10 instead of $15) we were ready to move into the hills and become hermits so we wouldn't have to rub shoulders with 10 million people ever again. But then we decided that we didn't want to hunt our own turkey legs, so I guess we will stay in the city after all.
1 comment:
At least we have car races at the Evergreen fair. Great pictures.
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