The 98th Annual Bear River Fair

The fair - be there! Oh boy, were we there all right. My first Bear River fair, and I think we got to experience everything. Rain and all. Despite the intermitant downpours, everyone managed to have a good time. Let's see, there was karoke, softball, face painting, a bounce house, food, t-shirts and sweatshirts, mini golf, bingo, chicken sh*t bingo (I'll describe later), a flea market, and exhibits from local residents. Not too shabby!

We started off by watching some softball games. Zach played for the Side Lake Store team, and Jesse and Brett Anderson were playing for Zup's grocery store. I'm pretty sure that the guys were drinking a bit in between at bats, their playing got worse with every inning! There was a party Sat night though, so I think the guys that were planning on going to that didn't want to continue on in the tournament and have to play early on Sunday morning. Makes sense!





Then we decided to check out the bingo table. Apparently, I'm a bingo wiz and I take no prisoners! Out of 3 games, I won two. My prize? Two liters of soda. Not so bad for $1.50! It's .25 cents for 3 bingo boards, and Travis and I both played three times with three boards each. So I think my math is right there. Then on Sunday we played again and Travis won some more soda. Nice! They had other prizes, but clearly soda trumps toy cars in our case!




Here are some pictures of our great bingo playing skills. That's Aunt Carol, Grandma Fran, Danica and our cousin Jenny playing with us.

So I'm sure you're wondering what Chicken Sh*t Bingo is now, right? Well, the basics are this: you put in a dollar for a number, anywhere from 1 to 60. So then they put a chicken in a cage over a board that has all the numbers. If the chicken poops on your number, you win a portion of the money! Supposedly some guys were buying half the board at a time though and monopolizing the game. I don't think there are printed rules for this type of thing though, so whatever!

I was really impressed with all the exhibits. We have some great farmers around here! Here's a sample of some of the entries:
Different types of hay



















Potatoes. We think there was a bit of a red potato scandal. The pretty, huge ones on the end (closes to the camera) got third and the ugly, little ones in the middle won first. Who's judging this thing?















More produce

Some of the beautiful flowers entered



Me, hard at work writing the results for my newspaper article! The photography entered was all really great!

Here is a great picture of Travis and Zach from a fair when they were little. So cute! They had a memory lane wall of past fair years.

There was a moment of drama at the end of the day on Saturday. The rain had just started in earnest and the winds picked up a bit. A man selling fresh corn had his tent blown over by the wind, and it ended up in the softball field! Luckily no one was playing, and there were no injuries. It's always exciting here in Bear River!







Well, that's it for now folks. Hopefully next year will be just as fun!