After going out to dinner one night a couple weeks ago, I was somehow roped into going to the Fryeburg Fair with a few friends.
I don’t mean to sound inconsiderate or anything. To be completely honest, I don’t really enjoy fairs. I’d much rather go to a festival or a concert or even just a new place to explore. I had a bad experience with the only other real fair I’ve ever visited: I only won a small white seal stuffed animal after spending a lot of money and time at some stupid game at the Bangor State Fair. Ah, the naïvity of youth.
My initial impression of the Fryeburg Fair wasn’t much different. After finishing the two-and-a-half to three hour drive to Fryeburg and a mediocre yet expensive lunch along the way, we were confronted with another one-and-a-half to two hour wait to go about three miles in traffic. (Again, I stress that I could not manage living/driving in a city.) By the time we actually entered the gate, it was around 3:30.
Once inside we realized how difficult it is to keep track of a group of six in a crowd of a lot of people. We walked around for a bit and looked around some of the craft areas and a few of the places where shows and demonstrations were planned for later in the day. We also took a bit of time to reflect upon the differences in our perspectives as college graduates; as Sarah, Erich, and I realized, fairs were less about grabbing that neat-o stuffed animal and more about spending a lot of money to get a prize in a probably-rigged game that wasn’t really worth it.
After realizing that, we started to notice that some of the food looked really good; we decided to get some dinner. Kind of. I had a blooming onion with ranch (yum) and some apple crisp with vanilla ice cream (yum). We sat in the grandstand looking at the racetrack and eating our wonderfully unhealthy food. I took time to notice all the paper from previous horse races still lying on the ground in front of us, and we also estimated how much money the fair must generate in order to support such a big venue for a one-week-a-year event.
After we finished eating we checked out some of the livestock. Sarah wanted to see the rabbits. We all laughed at how much noise all of the cows and the sheep made. I got to feel a cow’s fur and see a 5-day-old calf. 
I was even able to have a photo shoot with some really photogenic chicks.
As we were leaving, we were able to explore the fair for an hour with two of our college friends who found their way up to the fair from New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We were all really glad that we had a chance to see them; it had been a year (Columbus Day weekend last year, in fact) since we had seen them, and it provided a nice end to the trip. Kind of.
Matt, Sarah, Erich, and I headed back home for a drive strangely reminiscent of the trip home from Boston last year. As we drove down route 302, we noticed that we weren’t far from Portland. The Mexican magnet captured us once again, and at 10:00 we were walking through the doors at On the Border. It was definitely worth the extra few miles.
I plopped into bed at around 1:30. It turned out to be a great trip; our tempers flared a few times, but that’s not really a surprise. I’m not sure if I’d go back to the fair, but I’d definitely love to do more trips like that again.