The Tanana Valley State Fair: Keeping Fairbanksens Fat and Happy

Allow me to entertain you with a brief history and description of the Tanana Valley State Fair, which occurs annually in Fairbanks, Alaska for 8 blissful days around the second week in August. Our glorious, much anticipated fair was founded in 1924 and is the oldest fair in the state. That's right, take THAT Anchoragites, you city people thinking you can take credit for everything cool in Alaska. Nowadays over 1,000 volunteers come together to make this an incredible annual event that locals and visitors alike look forward to. I would personally like to thank the two ladies who kept the restrooms in Badger Hall clean. I had approached the restroom with much caution expecting grossness the likes of which I had experienced only once in my overseas travels but was pleasantly surprised when I was greeted with shiny cleanliness. You ladies rock!
The fair now has over 300 booths offering food, beverages, and trinkets for sale. My traditional guilty pleasure is to purchase an article of clothing from the Alaska Girls Clothing booth. I generally get a t-shirt but since I rarely wear the 6 AK Girls t-shirts currently in my possession, I splurged on the particularly decadent purchase of an overpriced, super-soft sweatshirt that I will hopefully wear with greater frequency.

 That's my friend Jennifer in the purple. We've been friends since the 3rd grade.

 We also tried on Nepalese mohawk hats but resisted the urge to purchase.

Now if I had the money, I would have definitely bought a flaming dragon.

Jennifer was also a fan, but, then again, who the heck wouldn't be. Flaming dragons are categorically awesome.
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Now to the good stuff, which is of course the tasty vittles guaranteed to ruin your figure. According to a friend of mine, fair food should be a) deep fried, b) something that is not ordinarily deep fried, and c) served on a stick. I concur.

 Dixon satisfies 1 of the above criteria, enjoying his pork chop on a stick.

Mom is a health nut now, so epic fail on all criteria. The grilled corn is delicious, though.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Cheesecake on a stick. In our defense we thought it was going to be deep fried cheesecake and it wasn't until we had it in our hands that we realized it was frozen. Why the stick? You've got me. Seems entirely unnecessary. We searched in vain for the booth selling deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which would have satisfied all the aforementioned criteria and potentially made us instantly ill.
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The Tanana Valley State Fair always has a corny theme. This year's was no different: "Barn in the USA".
Which brings me to the livestock portion of the fair.
I ignored the chickens and the larger animals. Not cute enough.

Baaahhhaaaaa! It's time to eat broccoli greens.

Awwwwww, cute enough to make you nauseous.

I'm not sure what that is, but I think it's alive.
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Many of you may be aware that produce gets a bit larger than normal up here near the Arctic Circle where we have 24 hour sunlight.
Just how large are we talking about?

Some averagely large zucchini and things.

The award winning cabbage, pumpkin, and mystery root vegetables.
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A fine day at the fair was had by all and it looks like a bird is landing on my head. Excellent!