Alaska is big; so are its veggies.

The Alaska State Fair.

The Alaska State Fair ticket booth: close until noon...

Today we drove our rental car up to Palmer, AK, the home of the Alaska State Fair. We were looking forward to the people watching and the "cultural experience." :) We arrived at about 11:30am, and we noticed we were one of only about twenty cars in the parking lot. We wondered if we had mistaken a local county fair for the state fair, but when we went to the entrance we learned that the fair didn't actually open until noon! We were glad we hadn't tried to get up early to make it to the fair! :)

We wandered around a bit, just seeing the typical state fair stuff like 4-H exhibits, food stands and rides. Then we noticed a building labeled "King Tut Exhibit." We wandered in and were surprised to see things labeled as artifacts from King Tut's tomb not even behind glass! At the very end of the exhibit was King Tut's mummy itself! At this point I was sure these objects were all replicas, but NOWHERE in the exhibit was anything labeled "Replica of King Tut's tomb," etc. I asked the woman guarding the entrance, "How did you get the real King Tut stuff at the Alaska state fair??" She told me they were actually all cast replicas made from molds of the real stuff, and also said, "They'd have somebody way more imposing than little me guarding it if it was the real stuff!" :)

Hey, look! It's King Tut........ NOT!

There was a lot of fresh produce for sale at the state fair, almost like a farmer's market. They also had a section dedicated to giant vegetables. The livestock section not only included the typical pigs, sheep and goats, but there were also reindeer that little kids had raised as their 4-H project!

Giant veggies!

The local "livestock." Hi Prancer!

After a few hours and lots of unhealthy food later, we decided to leave, having seen everything at the fair, plus it was starting to rain on us yet again... We headed back to Anchorage and did some laundry while relaxing in our room for a bit. Then we headed into downtown to have dinner at the Glacier Brewpub. It was a large restaurant, but the wait was still an hour and a half. Since we wanted to have a really nice last dinner in Anchorage, we decided to wait. About ten minutes later, our buzzer rang that our table was ready! That was a pleasant surprise! We had pretty much the best meal of our trip so far - FABULOUS, tender calimari and I had some more halibut. Gavin is tired of seafood, so he ordered steak. Then we headed back to our hotel for an early night - we have to catch our train to Seward tomorrow at 6:45am!

 

I am about to put some serious hurtin' on that blue raspberry cotton candy. :)

 

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