Cumming Country Fair & Festival

We had a full day today, one that started a little earlier with a visit to Kinsey Farms, which is literally less than a five minute drive from our house.  We met the grandparents there, who you can see above.  It's a nice place, and it was good to see a lot of people there milling about, with lots of kids dressed up in orange, or wearing pumpkin or candy corn patterns on their outfits.  We had our wagon with us, and were looking for a few good pumpkins, which we found after a bit of looking around.

But that's not all there is to do there, of course.  There is a petting zoo area, and also a really nice hay ride around their property.  You can see Madison and Mommy waiting above, and you can also see that the weather was absolutely wonderful for this sort of thing.

Ah!  The hay ride!  So many hay rides don't have one critical thing these days when it comes to hay rides.  And that's hay.  Some have become lazy, and have everyone sitting in a wagon on a wooden bench or something like that.  While that's nice, it's not technically a "hay" ride.  And you can see in these pictures that Kinsey Farms actually has "hay rides!"  This lends itself to a great running joke - you point over towards the other side of the wagon quickly and say, "Hey!"  And of course Madison looks.  And she realizes you're pointing at... "hay."  And then she pounds you on the shoulder or gives you a sharp elbow.

Anyway, the ride was nice, and it was surprisingly long.  We were thinking it was just a short trip around the perimeter of this one area, but in fact, there were two tractors and they were both taking this epic voyage around the very distant parts of the farm's property.

We were comfortable though, and enjoying it.  Because we were on hay.  Actually, it wasn't bumpy at all, and this might have something to do with the hay.  But the four of us were talking and riding along on a perfectly pleasant day, and it was just good to be together this Saturday morning.

Nana and Ye-Ye were happy to be with Madison, although Ye-Ye has been fighting some seasonal cough.  He was on the tail end of it, getting better, and didn't want to miss a small outing.  For them, it was about a fifteen minute drive.  It's all very close!

So we finished up the hay ride, and we looked through the odd-shaped gourds and smaller pumpkins. Madison got a small one, and Ye-Ye got some Indian corn.  It was a nice time heading out to the farm to support a local family.  A lot of other folks had the same idea, but this place had a nice atmosphere about it.

Fall is a great time for this sort of thing.  We'll be at other pumpkin patches soon enough, as soon as Mommy gets back for certain.  But today's events weren't done yet, as we were off and running with Nana over to the Cumming Country Fair & Festival.

Madison had a free ticket because of her work on the mural here - which we'll show in a bit.  But as you can see here, we hopped on the sky lift fairly quickly, the first thing we did after parking.  Madison was doing good on here, keeping her fear of heights in check.  Every so often the ride would stop there, but it got moving again pretty quickly.

Daddy sat in the car behind, and snapped shots of the fairgrounds, like this aerial shot above, one of a ride you'll see us on soon enough.  And of course, I could take plenty of pictures of Nana and Madison.  We rode this ride twice today, once where Daddy was in front, and once in the back.  Here's a shot of them from behind.

And here's a shot of a fun house we'd be visiting shortly.  Yes, it's a creepy clown.  But it has a mirror maze in it!  Daddy has been wanting to go in a mirror maze, and although this one isn't as big as the one up in Gatlinburg, it was still a lot of fun to run through.  Or... at least carefully feel your way through!

Here's another shot below of Nana and Madison talking as they ride.  They're looking out for different rides, deciding a game plan as we pass by this or that.  Madison also spotted a few friends in cars that were moving in the opposite direction.  Too bad they were too far away for a high-five!

Here's one last shot of the girls, as Daddy is looking back towards them.  You can see to the right a ride that you will never get me on.  It looks to be the opposite of fun.  They named this one "Cyclops," because I guess the big circle there looks like a giant eyeball?  I took this picture here while it was at a high point.

Somewhere else, this very ride got stuck with people up there that high up, and upside down.  That sounds like fun, doesn't it?  One of the things that is super curious about these rides is their use of licensed characters in pretty odd ways.  In this case, this ride is called "Cyclops," and so they have these eyeballs all over it.  You can see a giant one where the axle of the ride is.  But then towards the bottom on either side are these airbrushed murals, and both of them actually feature the leader of the X-Men, Cyclops.

And he's literally battling a cyclops!  It's Cyclops vs Cyclops!  There was another mural, a huge one, with a Dr. Octopus without any extra appendages, and a picture of Rogue, who desperately needed to button up.  The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman were there on that mural too, all of them battling a ... I'm not sure what.  But again I was wondering, does Marvel just let these images slide?  How does that work?

Anyway, we got some tickets and they were for unlimited rides, and they were thirty dollars each, so Daddy was doggedly determined to ride enough rides to justify the expense paid.  I think we came close, but at a great cost to Daddy's equilibrium!  Case in point:

The Himalayan!  I remember this sort of ride from when I was younger.  It goes really super fast, and loud music plays, and you'll hear this loud siren towards the end when things get even faster.

This ride was another home to odd mismatched airbrush work.  I mean, the artwork was all fantastic, and it reminded you of a wonderful trip - maybe in the 80's - to the Alps.  It features all these European sorts of people and ski jumps and so forth, and could be themed to some ride at an Alpine ski resort.... and it's called "The Himalayan."  Also notable was the carnie that works there.  This is a new word that Madison just learned.  A few others that we know also went this weekend, and this had probably had our favorite carnie there, a guy with shades on and a  hoodie up, perhaps to hide his identity.  He was a man of few words, but those were words of wisdom, like those barked at the the kids behind us when they were told to shift right in their seats and they instead moved left:  "Your other right!"  It was a great educational moment, as this gentleman pretty much summed up every stereotype of a carnie one could imagine.  Not that I have anything against anyone.  He was just a terrible representation of great customer service, from attire to attitude.  Someone has to keep up that carnie reputation!

Anyway, as mentioned earlier, we were in the GIANT CLOWN FACE next, and that means we got to do our mirror maze!  This was pretty short, but it was fun, and we can say we did it!  Madison enjoyed it, and then there was this other obstacle course fun house that she enjoyed too, especially this moving tunnel at the end.  Just how old is this thing anyway?  I remember going on something exactly like this when I was young.

It had all the moving platforms, stairs, slides, and it also had a place with all those curved mirrors that distort your image into something a little funny:

This was fun!  Not as much fun for Daddy was this other sidewinder ride, one they call here "The Mixer."  It's pretty formulaic, but this is one of Madison's new favorite rides:

Daddy looks a little frightened.  It's not so much the speed, it's the swirling motion.  And we were already spinning earlier, so Daddy's head was still spinning somewhat - but we had fun.  We were right next to the bumper cars, and this was exciting stuff for Madison, because after all this, we got to go on the bumper cars again!

She loves the bumper cars, and what was great this time was that Nana was with us, the three of us driving around our little taxis, colliding into one another.

Here's a picture below of Nana and Madison, posing in front of the taxi onslaught.  They had a great time!

The fairgrounds are pretty standard, with lots of rides set up, unfortunately most of them spinning around quite a bit.  But it's a fun atmosphere, and a lot of people come each year.

Mommy and Daddy like the fairs with competing livestock and shows, but this visit was a little shorter, so we didn't get to see much with the shows.  We did get to see a few oddities, like this Mater golf-cart.

But mostly, today was about rides.  This is the one that Daddy will never ride again.  You pose like Superman and spin in circles, right?  What could be so bad about that?

I believe this is the spinning ride that broke me.  But after five straight minutes of spinning on this thing, we were freed at last.  The last thirty laps, Daddy just sat there lying down with his eyes closed, praying that this would somehow end!

Here was another obstacle course, this one for kids only.  It had some rope bridges, as if in the jungle, and ended with this big slide you see above.  Once we were through with that, we went up to visit the petting zoo, which again compared to other fairs was somewhat limited.

But it was still nice.  We found a quarter on the ground, just before getting here, and sure enough, there was a place where you could buy food for the goats for a quarter.  So we used that right away, and collected enough food for both Mommy and Madison to feed some of these cute guys.

And of course there was another area too, one where everyone could walk in and pet some of the goats.  This one looks ready to collapse at any moment.

We walked around and explored some of the other areas as well, spotting this calliope here below - sadly they didn't have it up and going yet.  I hear they're pretty loud.

Speaking of calliope music, here's another spinning ride that Daddy opted to let Nana ride instead, the carousel:

This was nice.  We didn't get to ride the carousel at the Magic Kingdom this last time, but we did get to ride one here.  This was a nice little ride to go on as things slowed down for us a bit.  After this, we were walking around to look at some of the exhibits, including these amazing steam powered tractors - this one is so steampunk!

We also saw loggers using the diabolical saw blade there, cutting logs into smaller pieces so they could build ...wooden things.

You can see Uncle Jessie from the Dukes of Hazzard there.  After seeing a bit of this, we walked down to the Indian Village that they have set up, and this was actually pretty cool!  We wound up talking to this one guy who happened to be an artisan that creates jewelry up in Cherokee.

We bought a pair of earrings for Madison, some with bits of turquoise in them.  Madison picked them out, and promptly put them on.  They go well with her shirt, that's for sure!

The Indian Village area was very interesting and a nice place to take a little walk around.  We met a few others, saw some exhibits, and got to wander into some Cherokee structures, at least some that were built the way the Cherokee Indians would have.

Here's Nana and Madison in a ceremonial building, a round house with a fire pit in the middle.

It was interesting, and a nice change of pace.  Madison enjoyed it too, but it was clear we were getting ready to leave, at least because Daddy had some homework to do.  There were a few other shows, but we also wanted to get Nana home.  Maybe next year we'll catch those!  On the way out, we spotted this guy using a chainsaw to make art - he made an elephant you see here.

And we ran into this cowboy who has some very big pants.  He's a long tall Texan for sure.  He uses his lasso to round up folks wanting to pose for pictures, so we took him up on it!

It was a full day!  We ate there, corndogs and chicken strips with the usual amount of hot sauce.  But we weren't done yet... we had one more stop before going home... the mural!

We got to see the mural Madison helped paint in front of the fairgrounds!  She led us to the spot where she helped paint trees, lake and horizon on this mural, and also to the spot where she signed her name, which was pretty cool!

Afterwards, it was really time to head home.  We did just that, and relaxed at home the rest of the night, or at least Madison did.  Daddy was studying for his message tomorrow a good bit.  But we also talked with Mommy a lot, and did our reading and our prayers as well.  Mommy has been successful in getting Ba-Ba to gain some weight, or at least we hope so.  We know he's been increasing his caloric intake, and that's a good thing.  We'll see how things go the next time he hits the scales.  Again, it's a tough battle ahead, and we hate it.  Thankfully, Mommy is there.  But we really do miss her here, and she misses us.

We were quite exhausted at the end of this day, one filled with fall adventure!