Photos from the Alaska State Fair

I didn't take a lot of photos, but I hope you'll enjoy the ones that I picked to share. Click on the images for larger versions. The larger versions are at 50%.

The drive out to the Valley, as I've said before, is gorgeous. Last time we went out, we saw bald eagles. This time, we saw swans!

They are a bit far out, but I wanted you to see that view. That's in the direction of Anchorage, we were going the other way.

See? Swans!

The Alaska State Fair is held in Palmer. All the years that I've entered art in the fair and won ribbons, I never went. Now that I'm not entering any more, we've started going. One thing I always wanted to do was get a portrait of my kids. I have one done of myself in pastels from when I was a kid. The lines are usually quite long. This time, there wasn't one so we finally did get one done. This is the portrait in progress.

I was just thrilled with how it turned out, but after careful consideration and more than a few moments of "But I want it!" we decided to give it to their grandfather. Who was thrilled by the way. 

And of course, there are the rides. Because at that point I needed a break, they got tickets and we didn't see them again until they came back for us to hold on to some stuffed animals they won, then they were off on the rides again. So since I don't have photos of them on the rides, I took these of a couple of the rides against the back drop of the mountains.

Then we ate. Since none of us are huge fans of deep fried everything on a stick, we went to a booth run by a local farm and had Alaskan grown veggies and stew. We did a little more shopping and browsing, then it was time to head back to town.

On the way back, there is a spot you can see Mount Susitna aka The Sleeping Lady from, but you can't really pull off the road to take a photo. She took my breath away, all shrouded in clouds. I pointed it out to Michael, and said "Maybe when we get back to Anchorage, we should go to the Captain Cook Memorial and see she still looks like that to take a picture?"

Today we took it easy mostly. I worked out a template for a box to hold 2 Oreos, and now I need to decorate it, and I made a pillow box from a photo of a rose that I took. I'll post that later.

Michael is grilling locally grown potatoes and steak right now, even though it's getting dark, and we have a vague plan to possibly go to Thunderbird Falls either tomorrow or Monday. I hope your weekend is going fabulously.