This fair was really like attending a Tulsa State Fair with two major exceptions: The Draft Horse Show and Open Driving Competition and the Alpaca Packing Competition. The inlaid wood picture sums up 19th century Lynden. Now days, modern farming doesn't include using draft horses for any significant farm work, so they have morphed into show animals. Imagine scouring the countryside for vintage wagons, and reconditioning and refurbishing them (to the tune of about $50,000), add 3 pairs of perfectly matched draft horses (price tag - an additional $20,000) (Clydesdales being the most famous thanks to Anheuser Busch) tricked out in silver and black jingling harnesses ($5000 more) pulling these refurbished wagons. The judging takes place on the show level. (A winner is the team of horses who are best matched, best sized, best synced when trotting, and cutest - each horse is curried and braided and decorated - all the same). Multiply this picture by 8 teams, and it was darn impressive. Then just to make it more fun, there is the "Free Drive" - 8 teams weaving in and out of one another as they free drive all together around the arena for about 15 minutes. I'd never seen anything like it, and apparently you won't see anything like it anywhere else - all the horses were LOCAL. I have no idea what you would compare this to. It was a demonstration of skill and camaraderie. I videoed this, and I'm trying to figure out how to send it out, so you can catch the flavor is this. The other really fun event was the Alpaca Packing Competition. You take your curious, gentle, intelligent alpaca (the 3 top personality characteristics of this animal), add one 11 year old, and a cheezy obstacle course which includes 2 parallel sticks laying on the ground, a kiddy swimming pool, some fir branches piled on the ground, and a portable steps/ramp set up. Oh, and a set of side/side saddlebags that you pluck out of a kid's pup tent and load with rubber chickens. You lead your alpaca onto the course (not that easy) - then 'hitch' them to a car end and put on the pack holder. We first got the difficulty drift here when it became obvious that no respectable alpaca is going to stand still and have a pack holder put on them - it's kind of like saddling a horse. One poor girl never got her alpaca to cooperate at all. Now that you have the harness on - you lead the alpaca to the pup tent and put on the dual saddlebags and stuff them with rubber chickens. This was actually the easiest part. Finally, you lead the alpaca thru the obstacle course - having him walk between sticks, wade thru the kiddy pool (one competitor actually waded thru the pool himself, and he was the only one to persuade his alpaca to get its feet wet), walk over branches and climb either the steps or the ramp. Alpacas will walk over stuff pretty cooperatively, but they do not like to climb steps or wade thru water. Overall, this was very entertaining since it was very low key, and everyone was just having a lot of fun.
This was a fun fair, but it was much more commercial than our little county fair, the food was not as good - but we did get to support local charities with our lunch purchase. ON the plus side - those BIG HORSES were really, really something.
The other part of this tour is the old growth forest/glacial creek hike we took this week. This was in the Northern Cascades, and it was a wimp hike we got from "Hiking Western Washington with Kids" - my bible for hikes. Kid hikes are just about my speed. You can do some terrifying hikes here where you gain thousands of feet in elevation, ford streams, and hoist yourself over large boulders. This is not considered 'climbing' - this is considered hiking. So, the wimp hike we took was really, really gorgeous and you didn't have an opportunity to break your leg or die. I finally got my tootsies into the water here. OH GOOD HEAVENS. How did those miners or beaver hunters ever, ever stand in this water looking for gold or killing beaver? It was exactly like plunging your feet into a bucket of ice cubes. This was not like when it's cold when you first get into a pool, but then it feels great after you've been in for a few minutes. It was unrelenting, bone chilling, hurts horribly cold. I couldn't stand 2 minutes. Brrrrrrrrr.
Finally, the other interesting thing is I fell off my bike today. Well, perhaps not interesting, but novel. The last time I fell off a bike I was 10 years old and spun out on a patch of gravel at the bottom of my street which was a great gradual hill. That time I tore myself up really bad - both knees, both forearms - I still have the faded scars. This time I took a corner too fast, wasn't coordinated enough to squeeze the hand brakes to slow myself down, BUT I did miss the tree. I wound up hitting on my bad knee (left side, of course) and my forearm. Good news is my clothes protected both my knee and arm. I burned the skin off the front of my knee, but missed landing directly on either my knee joint or my elbow joint. I didn't tear either my jacket or my yoga pants. I'm going to be pretty bruised up, and I'm a little sore, but I consider myself fortunate not to be hurt worse. I also terrified Drake, and some nice lady who came out of her house and offered to let me come into her house to recover - I was laying on the street at this point rocking back and forth, holding my knee and trying not to cry. Hey, IT HURT. We're off to Vancouver tomorrow, so we can't let these little episodes set us back. In hindsight, I'm glad I was wearing my helmet. If I had hit my head on the pavement (easily could have), this would have been a hospital emergency room visit. On the plus side - doesn't it sound cool to say, "I fell off my bike." WOW - I sound like I'm 25.
Here are the pix of all these events except the bike accident - I didn't think to have Drake snap my picture while I was laying on the ground.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2010Tour7ForestHikeNorthwestFair?authkey=Gv1sRgCLG2187O5qqm0gE#
