The State Fair

Dale had some work to do from home today, so Adelaida and I met my friend Diane at the New Mexico State Fair for an afternoon of State Fair Fun. (Neither Adelaida nor I tried the deep fried twinkies. I settled on a roasted ear of corn and Adelaida munched on a carrot for lunch. But I couldn't resist the picture.)

We wandered around a bit at first before finding the animals. In addition to the ordinary fair highlights (pigs, cattle, horses, chickens), Adelaida found a new favorite animal: the alpaca. She glanced at the horses and cattle, stood at the pig enclosure for a couple of minutes, and talked to the chickens a bit, but none of those animals really kept her attention longer than a few minutes. We ended up spending close to an hour in the alpaca section because Adelaida couldn't stop laughing at them. I admit they are pretty funny-looking creatures, but the alpacas kept Adelaida entertained for much longer than I expected.

For my readers unfamiliar with the alpaca, the alpaca is a domesticated species of South American camelid, native to the Andes. It looks a little like a lamb with a really long neck, or a fuzzy miniature camel without a hump, or a fuzzy miniature llama. They are bred for their fur (which is extremely soft) and are apparently pretty docile herd animals.

Adelaida stood at this alpaca's cage for quite a while, laughing at the alpaca and sticking her tongue out at it.


In response, the alpaca bent down to look at her and stuck his tongue out as well.


Adelaida got to pet and even sit on a very gentle alpaca who was out roaming the aisles.


After watching a competition in which youth (kids 11 and under) led their alpacas through an obstacle course, we ventured back out to the fairgrounds. Our next stop was the tiger show, where a Bengal tiger preserve in the Florida panhandle was showing several tigers in a show. The tigers "performed" while playing with their handlers.

We spent the last half-hour or so at the Kids Corner of the fair. They had all kinds of cool demonstrations that Diane and I enjoyed playing with (and one day Adelaida will appreciate them too!). At one point we came to a table filled with foam puzzle pieces. I picked one up and realized that it looked like Texas, and soon we had put the entire United States foam puzzle together. We collected people as we worked the puzzle, and by the time we finished we had about ten people working on the puzzle around the table.

Our final stop in the Kids Corner was at the children's arts and crafts area. I sat down with Adelaida and was immediately handed a coloring page, a piece of paper with several paints on it, and a cup of paint brushes. Diane convinced me that Adelaida should do some finger painting, so we set the paint brushes aside and let Adelaida prepare her masterpiece using her fingers. I did let her try to use the paint brush, but it (like all other long skinny items that she gets in her hand) was headed right for her open mouth, so she went back to using her fingers, which was really more fun anyway. Of course, with her hands covered in paint, both Adelaida's clothes and my clothes soon became covered with paint as well. Fortunately, the paint was washable (another example of better living through chemistry!), so it should come out pretty easily.

Adelaida sports a painted hand and drops of lilac paint on her eyebrow.


We had to walk across the fairgrounds to get back to the car, and Adelaida finally decided it was nap time (she had considered sleeping earlier, but decided against it). She slept in Diane's arms for the walk back, and didn't even wake up when Diane and I decided to have an ice cream before we left -- she was completely insensible of the fact that she was sleeping on Diane's lap, with people talking and children screaming right next to her.