Festival

MN State Fair

Brianne Bilyeu, 4,262 Comments

Yesterday I went to the Minnesota State Fair with my little sister, Ashley, from Big Brothers Big Sisters.  We marched in the parade with a bunch of bands and other local groups.  Ashley found one of her friends and the group of us ended up hanging out all day long.

Big Brothers, Big Sisters marches in the 2010 Minnesota State Fair!

Ashley and Gang with the Fresh French Fries mascot

We ate so much food!  Seriously, I could have bought theater tickets for what I spent on food yesterday. Here’s the list of things that the six of us ate throughout the 10-hour day:

  • French fries
  • Deep-fried alligator bites
  • Corn on the cob
  • Tacos
  • Nachos
  • Famous Dave’s BBQ pork sandwich
  • Lemonade, frozen lemonades, lemonade slushies
  • Kettle corn
  • Pretzel with nacho cheese sauce
  • Foot-long corn dog
  • Caramel apple
  • Cherry snow cone
  • Root beer
  • Cheddar cheese curds
  • Ocean Spray pomegranete-blueberry juice
  • Curly fries
  • Pizza

Man!  It was a snacky, nibbling sort of day, and we didn’t all eat everything on the list, but that’s still a lot of food!

The Minnesota State Fair is kind of huge, perhaps bordering on gigantic, and maybe – dare I say? – ginormous.  Click on the picture below for the full-size image.

We did our darndest to see as much as we could!  We visited the Miracle of Birth Center and the Sheep and Poultery barn.  We sat in on the live audience of the KSTP Channel 5 4:30pm newscast with Megan Newquist.  All six of us were on TV (in one of the panning camera shots), and Ashley got Megan’s signature.

Ashley and her friend with KSTP meteorologist Chikage Windler

We walked by the Midway, the Kidway and Adventure Park.  We walked through Machinery Hill and Heritage Square.  We saw the skaters and BMXers at the X-Zone, petted the dogs in the Pet Center and walked through the Grandstand vendors area.  We visited the Eco Experience building and the Fine Arts building.  We rode the open-air Sky Gliders.  And at the end of the night we ran across a cheering crowd singing along with Boyz to Men at the Leine’s stage.

On the Sky Glider – not too bad for two girls who claim to not like heights!

And we had to stop to take pictures at every. One. Of the plywood cutouts we found.

The State Fair continues for the next 12 days.  I’d like to visit at least once more this season in order to see some of the “less exciting” buildings that I missed on account of visiting with a 13 year-old with a short attention span.  Exhibits like the arts and crafts building, the Agriculture and Horticulture building (Arg!  We missed the crop art!  How could we miss crop art?  It’s “Dedicated to the beauty of seeds pasted on a board to make a picture.” One doesn’t just miss seeds pasted on a board to make a picture!), the DNR building, the cattle and swine barns and the International Bazaar.

Ah, you ridiculous food, fun and farm-focused festival.  I love ya.

MN State Fair
{advertisement}

MN Renaissance Festival

Brianne Bilyeu, , 2,859 Comments

Weekend Adventures!

This week was the opening of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  For those of you who may have never been, there are Renaissance fairs all over the United States and each one has its own flavor.  The MN Ren Fest (or Fair) always takes place in in  Shakopee, MN.  The location has permanent buildings that are used by the same vendors every year.

The front gates of the MN Renaissance Festival

Going to the Ren Fest is like volunteering to be part of a play – you can dress up in costumes, you can speak with a lot of “thees”, “thous” and “thys”, and there is a good chance that you will interact with belly dancers, pirates, royalty, handmaidens and guardsmen, pickle sellers, fairies, peasants, minstrels and troubadours, explorers, merchants, sorcerers and many other types of characters.  Some of them are paid actors, others are just visitors who are getting into the spirit of the fair.

I’ve been to the Fair before, but I’d never gone on opening day.  I couldn’t find anyone to go with me, so I decided to head out by myself.  I drove out to Shakopee, parked and arrived at the gate at about 8:30am.  At about 8:50 actors started climbing up onto the gates.  I knew from past experience that there would be a gate show, usually with the king, queen and their attendants, as well as few rabble-rousers to taunt the royalty and visitors alike.  After the gate show they shoot a cannon to announce the start of the day’s fair and the gates open.   The gate show actually kind of stunk this year; the actors wove and dove through the relatively simple (and cheesy) script, but eventually they reached the end, the gates opened and the fairgoers streamed inside.

Visitors coming into the Ren Fest through the front gates.

Immediately inside the gates felt a lot like that scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit where Eddie Valiant enters Toon Town for the first time in the movie – it was noisy, crowded and there were actors on all sides singing songs of welcome to the fair.  It was kind of neat, but chaotic.

The Royal Court – Queen and King, center

The fairgrounds are actually quite large, and after the initial rush at the gate people ambled off in different directions and we ended up spread pretty thin.  For the first hour of the fair I had the place largely to myself.  It was very odd because I knew that in an hour, these paths would be packed with people.

At Ren Fest there are comedy shows, magic shows, belly dancing, juggling, wine tastings, cursing exhibitions, jousting, snakes, tortoises, dogs, ferrets, elephants, camels, goats, and usually at least one alligator.

A fairy blows bubbles for the cutest little girl that I saw at the fair all day.

Kick ass giant suits of armor outside of an artisan’s shop

Belly dancers entertaining in one of the festival’s open areas

What can you do with two sticks, some rope, and a bucket of soap?  This woman can make GIGANTIC bubbles.  I also caught one of the roaming flower girl in the back of the photo.

At Ren Fest you can pay to have someone thrown in the stocks, or you can purchase a ticket to have dinner with the queen and king (or both!).  There are approximately eighty billion and elebenty types of food to eat.  A common sight at Ren Fest is people of all stripes ambling along holding a gigantic cooked turkey leg, nibbling at the meat and watching the crowds.

I left fairly early in the morning – 10:30am!  That’s less than two hours inside and I’d bet a personal record for me.  The spaces were so empty that I was able to walk around the fairgrounds twice, and none of the shows I wanted to see started until after noon.  Also, the sun came out and burned off the early morning fog and it started to get really very muggy.  I’ll be headed back to the fair again later in the seven-weekend run with the Hubby and friends and that’s usually an entire day’s trip.  But this trip was unique and I’m glad that I went.

MN Renaissance Festival