A Fair Bear

A few weeks ago my hubby Chad won tickets to the Caroline County Agricultural Fair! We thought it would make for a fun family excursion, and we knew that Charmin would enjoy seeing the sights of a good ol’ American county fair. 

Caroline County is a little less than an hour almost straight north of us. And a bit of trivia for you- did you know that Caroline County was named in honor of the illustrious Queen Caroline of Ansbach, wife of King George II of England? And, in fact, Queen Caroline’s original 1727 coronation portrait still hangs in the Caroline County Courthouse. (Learned all that from a helpful police officer at the fair after we introduced him to Charmin.)

We started off with visiting some exotic animals...

Charmin was a bit nervous about meeting this camel, but the camel was quite charming, so the two of them got along famously.

Charmin sits with Audrey (who is, at the moment I am taking this photo, sneezing from the dust) as they watch the tractor pull. Oh, and did I mention it was about 90 degrees out there?

Charmin didn’t really understand the point of the tractor pull (and neither did we) but we enjoyed watching the big machines go vroom vroom. 

Next we went to the vendors’ tent, where various businesses set up to advertise their products.

Did you know that they make bath tubs teddy bear sized? 

We had to get a photo of Teeny in front of the Teeny Weeny Circus. And, as usual, she was very attached to Charmin so he got to be in the picture too.

Teeny relinquished him to Charlotte for this fun photo on the midway. We didn’t ride any rides (for all of us to ride one ride would have cost enough to buy us all a nice lunch- yikes!) but it was fun to look around and see what they had. 

That’s a really big wheel. On a really big John Deere tractor!

And speaking of really big...

Holy cow! 

The kids try to bust into the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Turkey Hill ice cream. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Ah, well. But they do have a flavor called “Extreme Cookies and Cream” which is my favorite ice cream ever, and if that had been there I’d have taken to that carton with a hacksaw, mark my words.

I’m finding it to be a lot of fun learning about how many places in Virginia have such close ties to Great Britain. I’m sure that when you look at a map of our lovely state you recognize several familiar place names with English connections- Essex, Sussex, Northumberland, Loudon, Prince William, Southampton, etc. See? We ditched y’all, but we still use your wonderful names. ;-)