Sadly, Avie departed Tide Hiker and returned to Tucson, AZ yesterday. The 2-weeks truly flew by and none of us were ready for her to go. She was a great guest and we enjoyed her stay with us immensely. We're looking forward to Avie's next visit.
Also, sadly, we were to meet one of Norm's high school class mates (Dick Rettinger) near the airport. It would have been a quick visit, because Dick had a golf outing to attend. But it would have been a nice, but short get-together--IF the traffic had cooperated. We were stalled in a long backup following an accident in a road construction area. Unfortunately, we did not get to Dick before he had to hightail it to the links. We'll be trying to reconnect again while in the southern Chesapeake.
All was not lost, though. We had plans, after we dropped Avie off at the airport, to do a driving tour of Richmond and attend the Virginia State Fair. We did both. Bob and Stephanie, tolerated another encore sight-seeing performance and led us on a great tour of VCU, Momument Drive and other interesting Richmond sights. Then it was off to corndog heaven!
Let the gluttony begin. (Only kidding!) The VA State Fair was a fried food paradise. There was fried everything, including twinkies, potato chips, oreo's and more. And I thought Wisconsin Cheese Curds were different. While we did not try everything, we did experiment with a few. Between the four of us (mostly two of us--you guess who by the pictures) we tried the fried twinkie, the fried sweet potato fries, the fried corndog, the chocolate covered potato chips, the grilled italian sausage, fried chicken and the (not fried to my knowledge) warm cinnimon bun with extra cream cheese icing. Needless to say, it was a bit quiet in the car on the drive home. That is, except for the stomach growls.
(Click on the pics for a larger than life view.)
In addition to the food, there were the typical agricultural, livestock etc displays and a midway with amusement rides. Of course there were the wierd displays of the live snake woman and the smallest women, etc. We skipped those - didn't want the deep fried twinkie to come up.
One display of particlar interest to us was the dairy cows. We saw a calf that was only hours old and still being cleaned by its mom. (That's when we were hungry for a milk shake.) We also saw little chicks poking their way out of their shells in a glass-lined incubator. (That's when we were hungry for fried chicken). We also saw the pig races--yes the pig races. Bob got his italian sausage earlier, in anticipation of the pig races. I think we were fortunate that we missed the "Exceedingly Awesome Dog Trick Show". Or, we might have gotten hungry for dog and poor Cassie and Godiva (Bob and Stephanie's pets) could have been prime meat on the hoof. OOh, Icky!
There were three pig race heats. The last heat consisted of 5 pot-belly oriental swine. (That's when we got hungry for chocolate covered bacon and sweet & sour pork.) They kept advertising that the races got faster but they did not. They got slower and the pot-bellys were the slowest. In fact, the winner- the pink one here- stopped just before the finish line to have a snack of something--what a pig! The second one almost overtook him before he got moving and crossed the line. The thrill and suspense was, well, phat!
September Song left today for Mobjack Bay. We stayed another to return the rental car and get the boat ready for about 10 days or so of anchoring before we hit the Norfolk area and the jumping off point for our trek south to warmer climes. Safe travels, September Song.
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