Why would anyone wear 4 inch stacked heels to the county fair?

This past weekend we spent up at Dan's parents' house, celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary and hanging out with his brother, back from the trenches of central America. I'd already decided to call in "sick" on Monday since our original plan was to do a two-day hike up Pike's Peak and back Sunday and Monday, but after the carousing at Saturday night's festivities nobody was up for a two-day hike.


Instead, Dan and I blew up his parents' inflatable kayaks and paddled around on Goose Poop Lake for a while (something I've never done before, but I got far more of a workout than I had expected to - who knew you use your ab muscles when paddling a kayak?). Later, we tried to see the new Bourne movie but it was sold out, so instead we played minigolf in the rain and I was, of course, by far the worst of the 3 of us (to my defense, I've only played minigolf like 4 times in my whole life, so all things considered I don't think I did too badly - only 20 over par!) That evening after dinner, Dan and Matt and I braved the on-again off-again rain and headed over to the county fair to take pictures and gawk at the carnies and see what other delights there were to be seen.



The fair was free, I think because it was raining and because it turned out we went the last night the midway was open. We walked around, taking some photos and watching the people who were enjoying their turkey legs and deep fried coke (not really. Dan actually looked for deep-fried coke but didn't find any). I find it kind of funny how people actually play the rigged games to win prizes worth at most 1/10th of what they shelled out to play; how many people voluntarily climb into the cars of the Zipper which will, at best, deprive you of your loose change and, at worst, be freshly cleansed of vomit (we actually saw a guy cleaning out one of the cars with a hose and a bucket; the ride was stopped and the other cars all still had people in them!). People seem to love the county fair even though everything is overpriced and overstimulating and over-the-top. Some people seemed dressed strangely - this one girl was all dressed up in fancy clothes and heels, which seemed perhaps ill-advised for the gravely dirt of the midway. I had fun taking pictures with different settings on my camera and actually ended up with a couple of decent ones, but was not at all tempted to participate.


After we did a pass through the midway, we went into the livestock building and saw Some Pigs and some goats trying to escape and some fluffy rabbits. Quite a few 4H kids were in there taking care of their animals and were a little puzzled that three adults who seemed to have no connection to the fair wandered around through the livestock area. I found a rabbit that looked a lot like the one my little sister had when she was a kid (a mini Dutch lop), though this lop was proper because both of his ears drooped. Another building had the PRCA rodeo going on, but I didn't need to see anyone roping and hogtying calves or attempting to stay on bulls for 8 seconds, so we just went back to the midway and took more pictures in the rainy dark summer night.