The Cuyahoga County Fair is absolutely my favorite time of year. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I am crazy for Christmas, and the Berea Rib Burn Off is even up there. The fair, though. The fair is the time where I come alive! Everything is so beautifully lit and it just feels magical.
Here are some of my fair highlights for you so that if you go to next years 123rd annual County Fair you will be able to navigate the best things. Not pictured: one of those giant slides you go down on while sitting on a potato sack and the rodeo, which was impossible to capture but was so much fun and had me on the edge of my seat!
Here is my darling husband in front of the Swiss Fried Cheese stand. There are other fried cheeses available at the fair. Try as many as you want, but I am telling you this stand is not only the cutest (look at how it is decorated like a little Swiss cottage!!!) but absolutely the best.
I meaaaaaaan, look at that. Swiss cheese rolled in cornbread batter and then deep fried. This is legitimately what I answer with when people ask me about my favorite food.
So now you have some food in you. The choice is yours. You can go look at the hobby and craft barn (which is SO weird and awesome) or you can waste about $30 trying to get a Pikachu stuffed animal that you don’t know what you would do with even if you won. Either way, you’re having fun.
I love going into the agriculture barn! I took these little cuties home with me, but knowing my black thumb they probably only have about another week. Sorry, little babies! I absolutely love seeing things like the biggest zucchini or the homemade scarecrows.
Look at all of these beautiful sunflowers! How do they even judge which one is the best? I’ll never understand.
Ready for a little dessert? We have apple dumplings a la mode, strawberry shortcake, elephant ears from a stand with a caricature of the cutest elephant I have ever seen.
But I am going with a flavor burst cone from the Creamy Castle, where they have about 20 flavors to mix with your vanilla soft serve to make the most delicious twist cone of your life. I typically get banana, but this year I got peach!
If you are thirsty, check out Wild Bill’s. I don’t typically drink soda, but this is an entirely different experience. You get a special copper cup to put your soda in so that it keeps it cool, and you can keep coming back to refill. All of the soda is homemade and has the BEST flavors, like birch beer!
So now you are hydrated and on the move. They typically have haunted houses in the back of the park, but for some reason this year they were not there. Bring back the houses for 2019! Not that I ever go in them at night, but I go in them during the day when they do not have any actors in them and the staging of them is always so interesting to me. One time I screamed bloody murder because there was a family walking behind us that caught up to us. I can’t handle haunted houses. Maybe a haunted hayride for children? That’s my speed.
This year was the first year that we had a rodeo at the fair, and it was AWESOME! Walter and I absolutely loved it. I made him leave work early so that we wouldn’t miss it. Every year they also have a demolition derby on the last night of the fair, which is always a blast.
These people on stilts terrified me (I am easily frightened, see above) but everyone else seemed incredibly entertained. They are just some of the musical and performance entertainers, and the acts switch up every night. My favorite part of the fair is the animals. I love petting the little lambs and watching dairy cows go up for auction. I was raise in Cleveland, but I think that I am a country girl at heart.
What is it about chickens that is so inspiring? The chickens and roosters share a barn with the bunnies where people can place bids on them. Their plumage is so incredibly beautiful. One day I will have the little farm of my dreams!
The horses are the way to my heart, however. I rode horseback when I was a child and I have been so interested in getting back into it. I think that it would be one of the most therapeutic things that I could do for myself. They are such stunning creatures.
Well, there you have it. My County Fair roundup! This is the first year that I did not make it down to the Ohio State Fair as well as the County Fair and I am pretty upset. So, I am just counting down the days until next year when it is Fair season again! See y’all there!
