Grange Fair: Carousel / Butterflies / Onion Rings!

It was a challenge to get our schedules to mesh, but we did it! One of my best friends and her mom and one of her daughters joined me in Centre Hall on this day for the Grange Fair, the last true encampment fair in the nation. The fair grounds boast 1,000 tents and 1,500 recreational vehicles when the Grange is in session. Yes, entire families camp in those ugly green tents, even in pouring-down rain!

The weather was dicey, to say the least. They'd been calling for all-day rains, thunderstorms, and flooding for days in advance. In the morning, I packed my umbrella in my daysack, grabbed my camera, and wondered if we were making a choice we might later regret. . . .

My friend's drive was two hours to get to the Grange, from the vicinity of Fort Indiantown Gap; ours was about a half-hour, maybe a bit more, if the fair traffic gets bad on route 45. I looked at the weather map before we left. It looked like bad storms were moving around north of us, moving OUT, actually. If we were going to get an all-afternoon rain, I couldn't see where it was coming from. And as I went to get in the car . . . hey, wait, what was that? SUNSHINE? Oh my goodness, the timing was perfect. The weather cleared and the rains moved out just as we left for the fair!

I had about a half-hour to spare before my friends arrived, so I walked around and photographed the rides. There is a section of kiddie rides just inside the main gates and down to the left. There is a bigger grouping of older-people rides in one of the fields. The photo above is from the kiddie section, where they have a lovely carousel. The horses looked very wild to me!

And then I was waiting by one of the main gates, and suddenly, everybody was there - my friend, her mom, and her younger daughter. We walked around, looking at the sewing and crafts and all kinds of veggies and other farm-related stuff. The Grange Fair is celebrating 150 years this year, and so that was a pretty big deal.

There are marvelous quilts and other sewing projects to see, and I took many photos of them. There was a particular one that caught my eye, of colorful flowers turning into butterflies and escaping to freedom in the sky. I thought to myself, Barb would have loved this one. You may see it in the extras.

There are two food stops we never miss at the fair, and the first one is fried veggies with ranch dip, and fried mozzarella. There is nothing that compares to the excitement of fresh fried food at the fair. NOTHING. You may see a photo of the golden, crispy, fried onion rings in the extras. The second stop is almost always that old favorite sweet treat, Bissinger's peach dumplings with cinnamon ice cream.

We didn't ride any rides, we didn't visit any animals, and we didn't stroll down the rows and rows of tents. There just wasn't time. But we did shop a lot, in strange booths, that sell everything you can imagine, under the sun. Here is the list of things I bought at the fair, which will give you some idea of the strange shopping that is available:

several Sistema food containers, 3" by 4" plastic baggies, a small glass bottle, tiny pretty snap purses with sunflowers and flamingos and butterflies, a pink fuzzy extendable thingy for dusting (no guarantees that said dusting will ever occur, but I loved the pink fuzzy thing and the house simply FEELS cleaner with it here!), two rosaries (so what if I'm Methodist!), one lavendar sports bra (perfect fit!), carabiner clips, dental tape, three shepherds' hooks, and a partridge in a pear tree! (j/k on the partridge!)

The sky, during this time, cleared and then clouded over. And I feared at one point that things might take a turn for the worse. But then the sun returned, cranking the heat up a bit. Did I mention that the Grange Fair is pretty much all outdoors, except for the stuff that's under roof in the display buildings? It can get pretty steamy there, and one of the challenges of the day is staying cool-headed, clear-eyed, and dry. More on that below.*

My friends and I had a lovely visit, and we walked pretty much the entire time from when we got there to when we left. I have mentioned in these pages that the past year, for me, has involved some walking challenges. My knees in particular just aren't what they used to be. The walking surfaces at the Grange Fair are all gravel and dirt. When it gets wet, as it did some, the grounds can be full of puddles . . . and mud.

So walking from around 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., when my husband dropped me off and then later came to pick me up, presented its own challenges. I took a glucosamine before I left; that helped some. But I'll be the first to admit that during the few pit stops we made, I was quite happy to sit down!

I was the first one to leave - with hugs and kisses and I Love You's all around - and I picked up my last purchase of three shepherd's hooks on my way out. I always take a daysack and I'm happy to report that everything I bought fit into it! The sack was huge by then, as you can imagine! Only the shepherd's hooks did not fit, and I found myself swinging them as I walked to the feed store next door, where my husband was waiting to pick me up.

We made a quick stop on the way home for fast food, per his request, and then we headed right on home. As I walked in the front door, I tossed everything onto the bed to unpack and look at later, and I said, loudly, "IT [the weather] CAN DO WHATEVER IT WANTS TO DO NOW!!!"

Well, about five minutes after that, the lights began to flicker. Within half an hour of when we got home, a huge, terrible storm arrived, and it beat and battered us for hours. It seemed like it would move out, and then it would STAY a while longer. 

As soon as I saw what was coming on the weather map, I opened up my Facebook to send a note to my friend to tell her to GET THE HECK OUT OF THERE, A BIG STORM IS COMING!!! And I was relieved to see a note from my friend, saying they'd left about a half-hour after I did. Hooray, they were heading AWAY from the big storms. They made it home, I think, without even a single drop of rain! Be safe, my loves.

Not so for us. Our storms continued long into the evening. There were dire warnings on the TV, about how - well, we're not really saying for sure that a tornado is coming - but HERE IS WHAT YOU DO IN CASE OF ONE, just so you know! Oh, okay. Thanks for that!

There was thunder. Lots of it. LOUD. There was major, major, shiny, bright, scary lightning. There was pea-sized hail, which rattled against the window panes. And then, in the middle of the whole big mess, one of the neighbors started setting off FIREWORKS! Yes, fireworks in a thunderstorm! Oh, we laughed and laughed about that. And the storm laughed too!

Did I feel like I'd run the gauntlet and lived to tell my tale? Oh yes, I did! Did I have a grand time at the fair, with some of those I love best in this whole wide world? Oh, yes, I did! Did we all get home safely, just before the bad stuff hit? Oh yes, we did! Well, I'd call that a successful visit to the Grange Fair! Yeehaw! See you next year at the fair!

I have three photos (out of the 328 shots I took at the fair! LOL!), so here are three songs to go with this story.
First, for my wild horses above, here are The Sundays, with Wild Horses.
Second, for the flowers turning into butterflies, here is Joni Mitchell, with Woodstock.
Third, for the golden and gorgeous and delectable onion rings, here is David Bowie's Golden Years, from that marvelous film, A Knight's Tale.

*Sidebar: I have long been wanting to try Lume, the full body deodorant, which is advertised all over the place, everywhere, all the time. It's way too pricey for me, but I finally gave in when they had a recent "buy three ridiculously tiny tubes of this stuff for $16 and pay no shipping" deal. My three scents arrived in the mail this past Monday. I've been opening them and trying them, one by one, and I like them okay. They promise to keep you scent-free for 72 hours. Well, with all good intentions, I applied "powder fresh" to my arm pits before I left in the morning. My honest feedback is that Lume failed the Grange Fair test. What I'm saying is that when I got home after such a day, even though it WAS NOT 72 hours later, I wasn't quite . . . powder fresh. So there's my (unsolicited) feedback on that! Save your money; spend it at the Fair!

Bonus boxed set of all of the Grange Fair postings in my journal:
2012 - Meet me at the fair!
2013 - In which we make new friends at the fair!
2014 - The "Monkey Man" and the monkey's kiss
2015 - Here there be cows
2016 - The Grange Fair: sunset on the midway
2017 - Lord have mercy! Peach dumpling at the fair!
2018 - Grange Fair: taco stand in the night
2019 - Celebrating 145 years of the Grange Fair!
2022 - Summoning unicorns at the Grange Fair!
2023 - Grange Fair: peach perfect/flamingo tent/1st place