Clark County Fair

Once again, located on the I-5 this time north of Salmon Creek and around half an hour north of Portland is one of the bigger fairgrounds in the state. It's been around since 1868, which is a pretty long time. 

We were off to a great start when we saw an adult-sized coaster. We might actually get to ride a coaster at these things. 

Prices were pretty reasonable especially compared to some of the other fairs we had been to.

A decent sized Star Flyer was the highest ride in the fair.

Really liking the design on this Flipper ride. 

Another Ring of Fire thing. Christof has some work to do on his photo-bombing.

That's quite a lot of lights on this ride. It must look pretty cool lit up. Unfortunately we weren't going to be around to see it.

The cyclone is another US fair staple.

2 wheels were present at the fair. The smaller one looked like a meccano project. The larger one looked a bit sturdier but was more prone to making people ill. We had a brief wait whilst they washed out the vomit of someone who clearly couldn't cope with such an intense attraction. 

Lurid coloured gravitron which made me feel sick just looking at it. 

A view from the top of the wheel overlooking the majority of the fair.

A cute half monkey, half banana creature. Is is a monkana or a banankey?

Quite a cool paint job, the face bit I mean. The rest is rubbish!

Given the heat and time of day the fair was well attended. It attracts up to a quarter of a million visitors in the one week that it runs for.

I loved this. It looked like a cross between Inspector Gadget and the Ant Hill Mob.

Ginger Sideburn Smurf was one of the least well known smurfs.

They sure do like those infernal elephant ears out here! 

A simulator ride which given the heat today would only be realistic if they were simulating a sauna. 

At one of the fair the local army corps had rocked up with a great looking trailer attempting to recruit more fodder for the military cause. 

This fair was run by Butler's Amusements. They're based out of California and have been running fairs on the west coast of America for over 40 years. 

The first of the two coasters that we rode, because we could, was the wacky worm pretty much the same as every other wacky worm in existence.

The second coaster was the cooly named Zillerator and whilst not exactly zillerating, it was a pretty decent ride which the others enjoyed way more than we did. More a failing of us being spoiled by our hobby.

The Freak Out was the fair company's newest attraction having been bought a little earlier in the year.  

Behind the fair a diving show had been set up. I've no idea if it was taking place today but it did look like a tempting way to cool off.

Being an American Fair as well as the rides there were a number of exhibition halls. The first one we checked was all about toys. Loving this clone trooper.

Etch-a-sketch was the opposite of Wagon Wheels. I definitely recall them being small when I was a kid.

Crayons, whilst seemingly designed for school kids to draw became the means for measuring how successful a kid's karate chop was...or was that just me?

Major construction project here! The repetition in that would drive me insane.

In one back corner of the hall was this sweet little collection of retro arcade games. A perfect taster of events I had planned later that night.

Every exhibition hall at these fairs had someone selling hot tubs. This one looked quite complicated.

We were really enjoying this fair. Yes we got to do the rides, but there was more to see around the exhibition halls.

They're pretty big pieces of meat..

Now I thought this would be the "woman with a small stool under the cow" type of milking but nope, it was a full-on industrial set up

Elsewhere a large building was home to farmers displaying their cattle.

Take care which one you pick up. They're not all alike.

This fair even had a seal show. That was quite random. This seal was posing for photos...for a price of course. 

OK, So being Scottish I'm used to hearing the "deep fried" jibe so just for the record here's evidence that the Americans are worse than us when it comes to the deep-frying of things that shouldn't be. Yes, they were even doing deep-fired pop tarts.

If you're interested in purchasing a flag they have all sorts here. 

Right, this was one bit of the fair I wasn't fully happy with so I'm going to have a little rant.

Animals don't belong in cages, and certainly don't belong in an environment like an exhibition hall. I subsequently realised that these animals were all rescued (yes, someone really did try bringing up a lion) but I'd have thought they'd have known better than to have the animals here. I can only guess they are trying to raise awareness of their plight...so don't exploit them for cash!

Is this pangolin dead?

Even I know that Fennec foxes are nocturnal creatures and during the day the last place they want to be is out in the sun. So let's put them in a cage where they can't escape it.

Placid lizardy thing.

Even the tiger looked bored.

We found this chap locked in a cage, by his own choosing mind. He was giving lectures on beekeeping whilst in a cage full of bees.

More cattle on show. They got better access to air conditioning than we did.

This made me laugh on the way out. The web address alone looks like some paedo-trap.

So, Clark County Fair was a great hit for us and with the only annoyance being those animals we really enjoyed ourselves here. But now it was time to head back South for an evening in the city of Portland. 

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