The Great New York State Fair

Its Labor Day weekend. What do we think would be a great way to spend it?

Visiting The Great New York State Fair on the last possible weekend!

The upside: the tickets are literally $1.
The downside: since tickets are $1, it is the highest traffic day of the year. Past stats for the Saturday of Labor Day weekend have been around 120,000-140,0000. I think we met most of them on the interstate.

So you might be wondering, where is the New York State Fair, anyway? Syracuse!
Fortunately for us in the Albany area, it is about two hours away. If you are willing to take the toll road, that is (if you want to save your $$, it is an extra hour).

In Missouri, there always seemed to be this threat to toll I-70--impacting a whole lot of people. The state of New York decided it was a good idea to toll two interstates: I-90 and I-87-- but only through the most traveled sections.

This past month, M and I have spent a considerable amount of effort avoiding toll roads (by "considerable", I mean that we put the "avoid tolls" feature on our GPS) and so have experienced an interesting amount of roads that wind their way through forests and plains. Mostly forest.

The E-Z pass is a device that you put in your car with a bar code. When you go through the toll booth, it scans your pass and deducts the money from your prepaid account.

Two things made us break down and buy an E-Z Pass for the toll roads.

1. Starting after Labor Day, I will be driving down to Albany two days a week to be a part-time reference librarian at a local college (driving to Albany efficiently involves a toll road).

2. The Great New York State Fair. Or rather, any travelling throughout the state that we will want to do, as well as the rest of the eastern seaboard. Apparently everyone agreed to use this system.

                                                       


According to M's research, the things to do at The Great New York State Fair are as follows:

• Eat strange foods
• Look at animals
• Watch amazing bands on the grandstand
• Enjoy a truly cultural experience

Here is what we actually did at The Great New York State Fair:

• Ate deep fried/frozen foods
• Admired the sand sculpture in the commerce building
• Watched a lady making soap and learned about the chemistry involved
• Wondered why the electric company had such a large booth
• Took a political poll sponsored by the Libertarian party
• Drank lots of milk from the 25 cent milk bar while admiring the butter sculpture
• Waited in restroom lines

Interestingly enough, we saw no animals (except for walking by the petting zoo).

Wizard of Oz sand sculpture. The reverse side is the Moon Landing

The Exposition Center had a
"Things to Do in New York State
all Year" Exhibit

The Summer section was focused on camping and included
Smoky the Bear and a "lean to" cabin with three sides
that are rentable throughout the state parks.

All in all, I think it was a good choice to go to the fair this weekend, it really was nice to go away and visit such an American tradition as the state fair. Walking around there, the general feeling I had was "this is American!". It did make me want to see that Rogers and Hammerstein musical "State Fair". Its a hard one to find now-a-days, probably need to check online.

This week starts another week of getting settled in the area and hoping to find some conclusion to the saga of registering the cars with an inspection of our red Durango. Nobody hold your breath now!