The fair was great. Small, true, but lots of fun. :) We went through the quilt and other crafts exhibit hall (mostly all quilts), and the hay barn (did you know that they actually have Hay Judging??? I didn't.) It sure smelled good, though all the bales looked pretty much alike to me. I did manage to distinguish between grass hay and alfalfa though!
Oh, and ate disgustingly greasy fair food. Whee. One note though - if getting a corn dog at a fair, double check the place you're getting it from. I got one that was just nasty. I didn't even try to eat the whole thing; gave up and went to get an Indian Taco from another stand instead. And, wouldn't you know it, they were selling corndogs too, and ones that looked much much better. Ah well. I consoled myself with a funnel cake. Mmmm.
And then.....
drumroll
the pig wrestling!
They started with the kids' teams. Looked mostly like younger teenagers, though one team was probably four 10 yr olds. The pig was almost bigger than they were! I should back up a bit. It's a ring; maybe 15 feet in diameter, lined with heavy plastic and filled with clay-mud and water. Duane said it was probably bentonite. There's a barrel in the middle that you have to stick the pig into.
Ok. So, they auctioned the teams off first - the kids' teams went for anywhere between 50-100 dollars; the older people usually 100-200. A couple teams were up in the $400 range though, and one men's team was $500! That seems awfully high to me! I guess that is the prize money though. 15% goes to a scholarship, and then the first and second place teams split the rest 60/40. Then they let a pig into the ring, slathered mud on its back, and the fun started. It wasn't very fair, I didn't think - they put extra water in before the women's teams started, so it was much slippery. And I think they gave them bigger pigs!
But it was really funny, and the people trying to catch the pigs hammed it up. But amazingly enough - if they actually managed to catch the pig, it only took an average of 30 seconds to get it into the barrel. There was a firetruck standing by - I wondered if it was there to resuscitate any pigs who had heart attacks! But no, they were just loaning their hose to wash the contestants off. And believe me, they needed washing!
AND... I got 9000 steps out of the deal. :) I'm a whole day away from Independence now. At this rate, I'm going to starve in the mountains like the Donner party. ;)

We’re in Douglas today and tomorrow. And we’re going to the State Fair tomorrow night. To watch *drumroll* pig-wrestling. Apparently how this goes is someone dunks a pig in the mud and then you try to catch it and stuff it in a barrel. Also, you have a time limit. Yes, you read that right up there; we’re going to WATCH. NOT catch and stuff. It’s a dinky little fair, really, but it will be lots of fun. And dinky is only relative. Maybe somewhere out there, there are smaller fairs. I’m not sure where you’d find them, but it’s possible!

Shawna and I are finally together. It's very exciting - AND we've made it more than three days! Which is a great relief; I don't know if I could have handled another month like last year's.
But all is going well. We're in Riverton at the moment, and will be heading back to Casper maybe on Thursday. There's something historical and cool going on at the Casper Interpretive Center, so we're hoping to get to go.
I'm enjoying getting to spend a little time here. I've been through both Casper and Riverton, but never to stay more than few days; so 4 weeks seems like a wealth of riches.
The nasty part is the mosquitoes though. Not that there are so many, or that they are so large - Portage was much much worse, and so was Saskatchewan last year - but these mosquitoes are evil mosquitoes and buzz around threatening you with terrible diseases! This is not going to help me getting to Oregon faster, but I am still determined. Mosquito repellent, here I come.

America on the Move

I may actually have found something that will get me off my lazy duff and getting a little exercise.
www.AmericaOnTheMove.org
It's a place online where you can keep track of your daily steps (yep, got to have a pedometer for that) or just the length of time you've exercised if it's something other than walking. I haven't done anything with that feature yet though.
The really cool part is that you can sign up for a Challenge. There are 5 or 6 routes that you can walk, and the challenge is to complete them in a certain number of days. I picked the Oregon Trail, and it's actually got me wanting to do a little more walking every day because I'm barely out of Independence, Missouri so far! There are checkpoints along the way, and links to click that tell you about where you've gotten to. You can't click on them until you've actually walked far enough to get there thought - tricksy of them! I have a long ways to go, and I'm almost entirely certain that I'm not going to make it to Oregon by Sept 14, but we'll see. :)
Also, you can have Challenge Buddies; so you can keep track of their progress (AND they can keep track of yours and scold you if you're sitting around too much). And did I mention its free? I'm a sucker for free stuff.
All in all, I like. Two thumbs up.

Er... sorry, Nichole. I saw another moose.
Not very clearly, she was obviously feeling shy. Darla and Michael took their trailer up into the mountains to park it for a while (to be visited on certain hot afternoons), and as we were driving lazily along the roads coming home, there she was - having a nice peaceful dinner in the willows. I don't blame her for hiding - I wouldn't want people driving by to stop and gawk at me while I was eating either.
Wednesday, I will be heading down to Casper to meet Shawna.

Midwife to a Dragonfly

Nichole and I went swimming at a lake near their place last night. That is, to be precise, she went swimming and I played in the water. But it was a lot of fun, and felt VERY good in 104 degree weather! When it cooled down to 99, we both started feeling a little chilly.
There were tons of blue dragonflies swarming all over just a few inches above the water. They were really beautiful; small and iridescent. So I'm standing about chin deep in the lake, wiggling my toes in the mud (pitch black very soft squooshy mud) when I see something swimming on the top of the water towards me. I scooped it up to see what it was - I thought at first it might be a tadpole with half of its legs out. But here was this strange pale green creature - half dragonfly (front half), half fish (back half). I wasn't sure what to do with it - it seemed perfectly happy in my hand, but I wanted to play! Can't do it with a bug in your hand. But I didn't want to put it back in the water if it would drown there; nor did I want to put it on dry land if it would dry up and die. Such a dilemma.
So eventually, I set it on the edge of the land, and let it decide for itself; and went back swimming. After a while, I came back to see what had happened, and the tail had turned into a pair of wings! It was sunning itself and drying out its wings. So somewhere out there on the shores of a lake in eastern MT, I have a dragonfly godchild. If, that is, it is still alive.

I got to Darla and Michael's just before they walked out the door to go to meeting. Time enough to brush my teeth and hop in the car and leave again. Jonathan was very good all through meeting, but as soon as we stopped singing, he hopped off the couch and hurried over to give me a huge hug. (That was the sound of my heart going pitty-patty, btw.) That, apparently, was sufficient, as he was out the door to play the next second.
Tonight, we read 'Potty Time' three times over and were starting on number 4, when Mommy rescued us with 'The Runaway Pumpkin'. Whew! But never let it be said I have shirked my Auntly Duties!

"I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves."

Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947

Hee. I love it.