The OC Fair

 

On Tuesday I picked up some pizza from work and some people from Mitchell's lab came over for game night. We played the pandemic board game and then a few rounds of Mario Kart. 

On Wednesday, Mitchell was late home from work, so I went to the new tea shop to try the bubble tea. I had the lavender milk tea and it was tasty.

That was it for during the week, other than my yoga class. 

On Saturday we drove over to Orange for the county fair. There was animal breeding contests, so there were several barns with sheep in which were all very friendly and not like those at petting zoos who get poked all day long and hide in the corners. 

Next door there was a paddock with so many miniature donkeys and a paddock where later on they held donkey time trials. Some were cooperative, but most had to be pulled around the course by their owners!

We walked through the fair, looking at all of the food stalls. There were a lot of BBQ stands and fried food. Mitchell got a huge pile of cheesy tater tots and I got some grilled corn. 

Cheesy carbs = happy Mitchell

We stopped at the product fair, which we thought would be local craft items, but it was actually a lot of companies selling everything from grills to mattresses. We also went to see some of the competitions which had been judged earlier in the season. There was baking, costume making, and some odd categories like collections and table settings. 

We also walked through the centennial farm, which had examples of different local fruits and vegetables growing and some more prize animals. There were several enormous cows, some goats and a couple of bunnies. There was also two huge horned bison, which although they were lying down, must have been taller than me!

Gourds, corn, passionfruit

This cow was as tall as me

It was then time for the Alaskan pig racing. They were much more cooperative than the donkeys and four tiny pigs raced around a small track, and even jumped some hurdles! Once we'd seen all of the agriculture, it was then time to go to the other side of the fair for the fairground rides. 

There were so many to choose from, and loads of carnival games too. We choose two rides to go on, including one that rose high above the fair and span around which was pretty cool, as it meant we could see the whole fair from up above. 

We had time for one more trip to see the sheep, and then we headed home for the day.

The next day we had the afternoon free, so after I'd called my friend in the morning, we drove down to the San Diego Safari Park. We only had four hours to spend there, but it turned out to be enough to see just about everything other than the smaller birds and animals. It was very hot that day, but it's a nice park to just walk around, especially around the lagoon. We'd bought some lunch on the way and ate that next to the lake. We also had time to take the safari tour and see the larger African mammals too. The elephants were splashing in their watering hole to keep cool. There weren't too many people at the zoo, probably because it was so hot, which was nice too.

Last time was bears, this time was cats

The entrance to the tiger area

That evening, we chatted to our friend who had moved to Texas, which has only a two hour time difference. This is nice as it means we can call someone in the evenings now!

Lots of love,

Emily and Mitchell

xxxxxxxxxxxxx