Check one, check one, syphilis, syphilis

It’s that time of year again, the New Mexico air smells of roasting green chile and the weather is starting change ever so slightly. IT’S STATE FAIR TIME!!!! So me and my homie (okay it was just my sis) headed to Albuquerque for the 70th-ish state fair (they announced what number it was while we were there but I was too mesmerized by a mermaid and some diving people to really pay attention). It was a blast! We mostly went to see the state fair concerts (Blake Shelton and Gary Allen for you country fans…who actually may be interested) but spent a good four hours looking at a bunch of strange things that don’t normally occupy my day (see above mentioned mermaid). There was a petting zoo…complete with miniature pigmy goats, a kid’s jump rope team (who even knew these existed outside of the Disney channel?!?!), “rainforest animals” doing tricks (it was actually just a single monkey…and yes they played the Tarzan sound track), some freaky china dolls (they actually had “Donny and Marie” dolls), and a whole lot of “New Mexico” junk that they were trying to peddle (honestly, how many dream catchers does one person need?). The best part of this and I would submit any fair has to be the food!!! Where else can you pay $20 for a thimble full of fresh squeezed lemonade…with actual pulp and seeds? Plus, who doesn’t love seeing a fellow fairgoer eating an entire turkey leg and ear of corn…not since medieval times has food been so handy. I must admit that I did succumb to the siren call of the cotton candy…it does have a mystic hold over me.
The concerts were GRRRRRRRRREAT (in my head Tony the tiger just read that last sentence). I must say that I did enjoy the Blake Shelton one better. He was very entertaining and personable…and his sound guy was awesome (I could actually understand what he was saying when talking). The show was fast paced and entertaining and he played familiar songs. Gary Allen’s was good as well but the sound quality was poorer and I didn’t know a lot of his songs…plus he had one too many guitar rifts for my taste. On his plus side he did do like 4 encores and did rise up out of the floor. Overall it was a great day! We got home about 2 am and I had to get up in the morning to take the YW hiking! It was awesome (note the sarcasm)!!
Okay, it wasn’t actually that bad. We only hiked about 3 miles and saw a lot of ruins. It was pretty cool. I had fun with the girls that went. They had me laughing the entire time. At one point the park had planted two small corn stalks in the middle of the trail…I think as a way to point out what the original inhabitants would have eaten (like we don’t know what corn is). One of the YW responded by saying, “Cool! We should jack it!” (Why would we want to jack corn stalks is beyond me…they were only two feet tall with no corn) Obviously we have to have a lesson on “jacking” other people’s stuff. Needless to say we didn’t end up jacking anything…that I’m aware of. The other leader and I had a great time explaining the zombies and other things along the way (we didn’t want to buy the guide book that explained what things actually were, so we kinda made some stuff up). It was a great weekend. Hopefully yours was great too!