Travel Log: Benton County Fair

I am a major sucker for county fairs. I just love them! They remind me of my youth, my roots, and my love for fried pastries...... I resisted the elephant ears this time. My husband and I biked to the fair last weekend and had a great time. We even got $2 off the ticket price for taking eco friendly transportation: pretty cool! Less cool that i took us about 20 blocks too far east on the bike bath by accident: good for me, not so great for my tired after work husband. It was a gorgeous ride, though and we huffed our way to the closest stall for some cute animal fixes.

When i was a teenager, i cared more about the rides than the displays. Nowadays I can't bring myself to spend $8 for one ride, despite the Scrambler being my favorite ride EVER. So we settled ourselves with the displays and I quizzed myself on my knowledge of different goat and chicken breeds. Checking out all the different goats was good for us in visualizing our future flock, as well. Sheep: TOO BIG! We'll definitely be starting out with a dairy goat and weaned doeling. Angora goats, however aren't that big, so we might get a full Angora wether instead of a Pygora. Baby goats are so dang cute. It's hard to resist them and I about adopted one on the spot!

This little kid kept instigating the older goats to butting matches. Complete sillyness.

We also stumbled on a display set up for agility dogs. I've been toying with the idea of getting Pocket into agility. We've already worked with her to develop herding skills, but agility would be a great outlet for her energy and active brain without having to rely on big ole' sheep.  Best Friend's Obedience and Agility School sounds like a great opportunity for us and is reasonably priced, in my opinion that is. The woman who told us about the program considered the classes to be quite expensive, but at $90 per 6 week course, that's a heck of a lot cheaper than the $275 we spent on Pocket's puppy obedience class at the excellent school we took her to in Austin. The only rub is that you have to take tons of classes in order to work your way into agility. You don't even get to see the equipment until 5 or 6 classes in. That's a lot of dedication and commitment to time, so we'll wait until we have 'real jobs' that will be keeping us here longer than October. Still an exciting opportunity to look forward to.

Biking to the county fair and walking about looking at animals, chatting with locals, asking questions and making plans, holding hands and feeling like part of the community: what a great example of exactly what my husband and I were looking for in our move to Oregon. We're out of the big city and we're already feeling like part of a small town. We're making friends and connections, and just enjoying simple living at a different pace.