Field Trip: Sacramento County Fair

It's county fair time!  The state fair is gigantic and overwhelming, but the county fair is more our speed.

We are blessed to have the opportunity to attend FREE as part of a homeschool field trip organized by one of our Park Day moms.

Hard to say no to FREE parking and FREE admission.  This also makes it easier to leave when we start getting tired or cranky, whereas if we've invested a lot of money in an outing, I tend to feel like I have to soldier it out until everyone is miserable.

Our first stop inside the gates was the animals.

This little guy was playing like a kitten.

And this big guy was trying to climb out of his enclosure.

I love tigers.  Tigers and pandas are my favorites.

It was neat to be so much closer to them than we usually get at the zoo.

We ventured over to the farm animals after a detour through the shopping building, and ran into both a friend from Park Day and a fellow Crew mom.  Hannah and Katie got to pet a goat.

We got to see some of the animals being shown.

On our way out of the farm animal buildings, we stopped and checked out the bunnies.

After a quick stop at the hand washing station, we found a spot by the stage for lunch.

I was disappointed because the program listed Chinese acrobats for this time slot, but there were grade schoolers singing and drumming instead.

So I was delighted when the kids wrapped up and the Chinese acrobats came on a bit late.  First, it was the lion dancers.

Then the drum girls.

They were really fun to watch.

Chinese culture is so fascinating, and it was such a treat that they happened to be performing when we were there.

They did Chinese yo yo tricks, too.

Then the male acrobats came back out and did tumbles and jumps through and over hoops.

They were so entertaining that we barely looked at our lunch.

After the show, we walked around for a while and looked at more exhibits, including a stop at The Forest Foundation, where we learned about trees, products made from trees, and why you shouldn't take firewood with you when you go camping (you can spread tree diseases).

Then we were pretty much done.  I'd told the kids ahead of time that we would not be doing carnival rides.

We stopped by the animals again on the way out.

We used to have a turtle at our house, but it was the size of a bottle cap when we got it.  This one was more the size of a laundry basket.

In short, we had a nice couple of hours of free fun at the County Fair.

Thanks for clicking for us!