September 1, 2005

It is September. It is clear that Summer is coming to an end. Of course in Ohio, the Geauga County Fair was always a signal that Summer was over. So yesterday, we went to the Alaska State Fair. It was cool (mid 50’s) and it rained the whole time. The fair was smaller than Geauga’s. It was nice enough with plenty of junk food and local businesses. There were lots of 4 wheelers and snow machines and a few travel trailers that we looked at.

We walked through all of the competitive displays. There were typical fair displays and competitions, just with an Alaskan touch - think quilts with polar bears in the design, as an example or wine made out of currants or other local berries. There was even a canned meat and a canned seafood competition, a still useful local talent.

All the animals were housed in one building, except for the horses which were in a separate area. We watched the 4H pig show for pigs under 275 lbs. The kids kept moving their pigs around the ring while the judge tried to do his thing. Several pig fights broke out and there were volunteers in the ring to break them up. It was somehow very amusing to us. As we walked away, we ran into a pig that one of the kids and his family were chasing all around, trying to herd it back to its pen. I just walked along side of it, hitting it with my knee to keep it moving. I then hopped in front of it when we got to its pen and with all of us surrounding it, it gave up and went in. Pig herding - never had that happen to me at Geauga.

I was really looking forward to seeing the giant vegetables. Unfortunately, our visit was kind of between vegetable competitions so the only thing we saw were some big zucchinis. It was a disappointment since I was hoping to see cabbages or pumpkins. We did see some cabbages in a field as we drove into the fair grounds. It was even more disappointing when we saw on the news last night that the pumpkin competition was yesterday, we just missed it. A new record was set with a pumpkin that weighed over 900 lbs. Oh, well, maybe next year.

This evening we went for another ride with the Arctic Bicycle Club. It was one of the larger groups we have ridden with and we had met everyone before so it was a fun group. We rode at Kincaid Park which is a point of land that sticks out into Cook Inlet. This is not in the mountains, it is on the flat land of the Anchorage Bowl. There is quite a bit of roll to the land in the park, so we got plenty of exercise going up and down short hills. It was kind of like riding in Ohio. The weather was perfect, sunny and cool.

On our way out of the park we saw a momma moose and her baby (babies are pretty big this time of year). Less than 100 feet away was a bull moose. His antlers were shedding their velvet so he had strings of stuff hanging. It was kind of strange looking. We saw another moose a little further down the road. Kincaid Park is full of moose in spite of being cut off from the real wilderness by Anchorage.

So that’s it, a fair with pig herding, a bike ride, and a 4-moose evening. A good couple of days.