(Sorry this is early… no time on Monday mornings!)
The Minnesota State Fair (and many other state fairs I’m sure) is a rather different experience. I’ve been to county fairs before, but a state fair was an entirely new experience for me. The sheer size of the grounds and the number of people were incredible. People were everywhere and more just seemed to keep materializing the longer we stayed. You could spend an entire day – or the whole twelve days of the fair even – just watching the people. But we weren’t there to watch the people; oh no, we had a mission.
Our mission (which apparently we chose to accept) was to see and pat as many different sizes, colors, and species of animals as possible. (To this end we also regularly go to zoos, petting zoos, farms, etc.) As soon as we got in the gates, we saw the Miracle of Life exhibit. For all the city slickers who’d never otherwise get an opportunity to see pigs, goats, sheep, or cows being born, they have a whole barn filled with soon-to-be new mothers. No one gave birth while we were there, but we did get to pat a 4-day-old piglet and saw some one-day-old piglets. And adorable little lambs. And some fluffly yellow ducklings. Oh yes, baby animals are cuuuuuute! (I’ll post pix later in the week.)
Following the baby exhibit, we needed some food so Keith tried hot dish on a stick – a purely Minnesota invention. As I have learned, hot dish is the local term for a casserole of meat, maybe a veggie, tater tots, and cream of something soup. Apparently people actually eat this for some reason. I’m still trying to understand that part. Anyway, they managed to devise a way to put that on a stick and deep fry it. I got a corn dog. Seemed safer if not culinarily superior.
One can get just about anything on a stick at the fair. They had the aforementioned corn dogs and hot dish on a stick, plus pizza, cheesecake, chocolate-dipped key lime pie, pork chops, gator(!), pickles, deep-fried candy bars, and deep-fried twinkies. I think I’m better off not having tried most of those!
From there we headed to the Coliseum to see an English horse show. They seemed to value the opposite ends of the spectrum, size-wise, as the first group we saw was the miniature horses and two of the later groups were shires (really big work horses). The little miniature horses, driving little carts, were SOOOOO cute. The whole audience went “awwwwwww” when they came out. (There will be pictures later in the week, I promise!) They also had a short Renaissance Faire-esque jousting session, which was ok, but I’d rather have seen more of the regular English riding show parts. The knights were awfully cute though. 
We had to eat more after that, and we’d seen a sign for fried green pepper rings. Now we’d hit on something worth talking about. They were really really good. Some things should be deep fried. They were battered and fried and served with marinara sauce. Yum!
We checked out the cows and sheep after that, but there really wasn’t much to say about them. There was a family of highland cattle, including a baby, that was neat, but otherwise cows and sheep are rather uninspiring.
We rounded out our food for the day with a milkshake from the U of M dairy club (or something like that), which was worth standing in line for. (OK so I guess cows are good for something!)
We stopped by one of the band stands for an a cappella group that one of my coworkers had told me to check out, and they were good. We also looked at the crafts, and wandered through part of the midway. But that’s where the thousands and thousands of people were so we passed through and went back to the animals.
We finished off with the horses and another tour through the baby animals and called it a day. Fried food, lots of animals, and some singing. I’d call that a good day!
Very nice OP about the Minnesota State Fair, btw taxi78cab. I too am intrigued by the idea of “hot dish” on a stick and can’t fathom how it is possible.