Chapter 117
Wonderful Day for a Fair

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(Originally posted December 4, 2013)

July 18-21, 2013

On Sunday, Tracy and I had plans for later in the day, but we decided to try to head to Disneyland for a quick lunch since we hadn’t been in a while. We didn’t really plan on spending much time in the parks, so we tried to park at Downtown Disney. Unfortunately, an hour later, we still hadn’t found parking and I wasn’t feeling very good.

We finally ended up in the Simba lot, and we walked over to the Grand Californian. We headed back to White Water Snacks, where we ordered the Carnitas Angus Cheeseburger (with Jack cheese, seasoned pork, pico de gallo and guacamole). Guy had just reviewed it for Touring Plans and claimed it was one of the best burgers on property, but I can’t really eat a lot of what was on it, so we got the pico and the guac on the side.

My half of the burger was definitely a little on the dry side, but it was still pretty good. Tracy was able to get the whole experience, and I know she liked it.

Finishing up after lunch, we headed into DCA for a very short while. We went into the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail because we wanted to meet Dug.

We continued walking through that area and went through a few of the paths

The views in there are always gorgeous.

We walked across the rope bridge, and the bounciness of it all left both Tracy and I feeling a little off-balance and queasy for the next several minutes.

Heading to Paradise Pier, we rode Jumpin’ Jellyfish and then got a return pass for Toy Story Mania, but it wasn’t good for almost an hour, so we knew we probably wouldn’t be able to use it because we had other places to be.

We walked onto The Little Mermaid, and Tracy took this picture for her coworker who is terrified of Ursula.

As we walked by Duffy’s area in Paradise Pier, he was out, so we had to take a picture with our favorite bear.

At this point, I wanted to stay to ride another fun attraction (be it Toy Story or Soarin’ or something), but knew we should probably head out, so we made our way back to the car.

Our plans for the rest of the day were actually pretty exciting—we were meeting up with another of Tracy’s coworkers to go check out the OC Fair.

First, I should introduce you to Eddie. He was an intern at CoolTech over the summer, but he goes to school in New Jersey. Here’s a picture of Tracy and Eddie from our trip to Soak City a few weeks prior. Yes, they look ridiculous standing next to each other because he’s like six-and-a-half feet tall.

He’s a really awesome guy—one of those personalities that everyone is drawn to—so he made a big splash at the company in just a few short months. This weekend, his girlfriend Kayleigh was actually visiting from NJ, so we had been spending a lot of time hanging out with them, and they were the ones we were planning to meet up with at the fair.

Traffic heading into the fairgrounds was truly a nightmare. I know we were at a standstill for over an hour, and it would have been longer if we hadn’t given up on trying to get to the actual fairgrounds parking lot and settling for a nearby school lot that we could walk from. Eddie and Kayleigh had run into the crazy traffic too, obviously, so we all arrived at the fair much later than we intended.

I think the first thing that struck us about these fairgrounds was just how ENORMOUS they were. Orange County does NOT joke around when it holds a fair. It takes place throughout the entire summer, and yet it was still PACKED with people.

There must have been hundreds of food vendors, hundreds more vendors of other things, scores of carnival rides and games, and much, much more.

Tracy and I were determined to try a Fried Twinkie because we’d never been to a REAL county fair before and never had the opportunity. Unfortunately, though we found several stands with Fried Twinkies on their menus, none of them actually had the “delicacy.” Because Hostess had only JUST started making Twinkies again (maybe a week or so before we went to the fair), they hadn’t been able to get ahold of any yet… We “settled” instead for Fried Cookie Dough—which we ate so quickly, I never even got a picture. We also got a Waffle Dog (which is a hot dog on a stick inside of a waffle).

After eating (boy, were those snacks DISGUSTING/also delicious), we walked around the fair for a while. The skyway that they had set up above the whole fair looked like so much fun, but I am NOT comfortable riding any of the attractions they have at county fairs. They always look like they’re about to fall apart.

Of course, there were these folks on stilts…?

Also, your standard, run-of-the-mill elephant topiary.

Tracy wanted us to win one of these raccoons, but the games were all SO expensive.

Of course, one of my favorite parts about any county fair is seeing all the livestock. We liked the cows.

I think we stayed at the fair for about an hour and a half before we were exhausted by it. I’m sure it was as much walking as a typical day at Disneyland, and there’s so much sensory overload that we’d had enough. We were about to leave, but then Tracy spotted a cotton candy stand and just had to get some. A couple days before, when we were at Disneyland, we’d contemplated getting cotton candy for a snack but decided it was too expensive. I’m sure it wasn’t any cheaper here at the fair, but we decided to splurge.