My Fair Favorites: Top Ten Things I Loved About the 2018 Indiana State Fair

One of my favorite summer events I look forward to every year is the Indiana State Fair.  I like to go at least once a year with my mom.  I take off work and we go on a weekday, when it’s easier to find parking and not as crowded.  This year it turned out we went on a very busy day though!  The second Tuesday of the fair set a new weekday attendance record.  We chose the always popular $2 Tuesday ($2 admission, $2 food specials at every vendor, and $2 midway rides), plus lots of rain was forecast for the rest of the week, so we chose the the best weather day to go to the fair – along with everyone else!  Here are the top 10 things I loved the most about the fair this year.

1. Goat Mountain  My favorite place to see animals at the fair is Goat Mountain, just outside and to the east of the Department of Natural Resources building. You’re guaranteed to see goats there since it is open each day of the fair. (The animals in many of the livestock barns are only there for a few days during its run. The llamas for example, were only at the fair for the first three days. I’d love to see a Llama Mountain!)  The goats are in one long row, with a large “mountain” area they can play in behind the pens. The best part: you can feed them! Food equals friendliness and photo ops!  Skip the 25-cent feed they don’t like, and buy the $2 bag of carrots.  It’s worth it because they will become your BFF and one bag filled with lots of thinly sliced carrots goes a long way.  Lots of breeds including dairy goats, Pygmy goats, Boer goats, and Angora goats are represented at Goat Mountain.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Demonstration Garden  Just northeast of Goat Mountain, the Purdue Extension Demonstration Garden is my favorite outdoor spot at the fair.  It’s a gardener’s paradise tucked away in the back of the fairgrounds, with a large variety of flowers, fruits and vegetables on display.   New kinds of plants suited to Indiana’s climate and gardening techniques are shown, providing inspiration for your own garden.  The garden was started six years ago and it gets prettier every year with new flowers and features added like towers, vertical gardens, succulents, and archways.  Purdue Extension-Marion County staff and Master Gardener volunteers plant and care for the gardens.  I spied the largest praying mantis I’ve ever seen in the garden. It was four or five inches long!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Taste from Indiana Farms  This is the place to get free food at the fair, and head indoors for an air-conditioned break from the August heat.  Different Indiana farms hand out samples of their products, some of them processed into products like granola bars and cheese puffs, others freshly prepared like pork, lamb, watermelon, and apple cider slushies. As you snack your way through the line, you’ll also learn facts about Indiana agriculture as you go.  Everything is tasty and it’s a great way to eat your lunch for free!  As a bonus, you can collect a bag of free popcorn at the end.  Taste from Indiana Farms runs 11:00-5:00 Tuesday through Thursday of the second week of the fair and is located in the Farm Bureau Building.
4. Fabulous Fair Food  While we’re on the subject of food… No trip to the State Fair is complete without eating some of my fair food favorites, and this year was no exception!  I tried one of the new featured food items for 2018, the inside out grilled cheese from the Dairy Bar (which Hoosiers love to call the “dairy barn” – understandably so since it’s shaped like a barn). With cheddar baked on the outside of sourdough bread and stuffed with melted gouda on the inside, it was so cheesy and delicious! It’s definitely a new favorite that I hope they bring back next year. I also had a milkshake from the Dairy Bar (a $2 Tuesday special), deep fried Reese’s cups (which taste like donuts filled with peanut butter and chocolate), a boneless pork chop from the pork tent, and a lemon shake up.  I took home salt water taffy in my favorite flavors – banana, peanut butter, chocolate, and anise. I also tried my mom’s peach cider slush which was another delicious new featured food item this year. I didn’t have room this year for a bison burger, elephant ear or the fried veggies from Dr. Vegetable, but those are my other favorite fair foods!
5. Glass Barn Photo Booth  The pictureU photo booth in the back of the Indiana Soybean Alliance’s Glass Barn is a favorite fair stop for my mom and me. You stand in front of a green screen and choose one of four postcard backgrounds, then snap a photo and email it to yourself. Each year there are at least one or two new backgrounds and we always choose the new scenes to add to our digital collection. Depending on what color you wear, you may look a little ghostly and blend into the background (like me!), especially if you’re wearing blue or green. The Glass Barn is a neat building and worth a stop. It opened in 2013 so it’s the newest building on the fairgrounds. There are lots of interactive exhibits about soybean farming inside, and the exterior of the building has seven roof peaks that not only look nice, but serve to conserve water by funneling rain water into the surrounding gardens.
   
6. The Big Cheese  Every year for over a decade, Sarah Kaufmann has carved a giant sculpture made out of cheese at the state fair while working in a refrigerated mini theater of sorts.  If you go the first week of the fair, you can watch her work and answer questions, and if you go the second week of the fair, you can view the finished product. We never miss it! This year’s theme for the Big Cheese was Great Dairy Moo-ments in History. The 1000 pound sculpture doesn’t go to waste. It’s used as a biofuel to generate electricity for a livestock farming operation after the fair. You can find the Big Cheese in the AgHort building.
7. Hook’s Drugstore Museum  This fair gem started out as a temporary exhibit for the 1966 State Fair but was so popular it became a permanent museum.  It’s one of my favorite places at the fair, but some years I skip it since it doesn’t change from year to year. The interior recreates a Victorian-era drugstore and includes a soda fountain where you can buy an ice cream soda.  All of the antiques inside are real and not replicas.  I love the colorful glass show globes in the window (more can be found throughout the museum), which used to be found in old drugstore windows similar to how barber shops have barber poles out front.   The insanely gorgeous pharmacy cabinets date back to the 1850s.  Here is more history on this fascinating place.
   
   
   
   
8. Celebrating Indiana’s Circus History Exhibit  Each year there are different exhibits to celebrate the yearly State Fair theme, and this year the Harvest Pavilion had an interactive circus history exhibit to go along with the 2018 circus theme of Step Right Up.  (There was also a Big Top Circus show at the fair this year I didn’t see – mainly to avoid the clowns, crowds, noise and wait time.)  Many items from the International Circus Hall of Fame in Peru, Indiana and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ exhibit Circus: Starring YOU! were on display in the Harvest Pavilion, with lots of circus activities for kids.  I loved seeing the old circus wagons, including the world’s largest wagon called The Two Hemispheres.  The yearly Can-struction contest in the pavilion had a circus theme as well and my favorite design was The Greatest Showman made from cans.  All cans are donated to a food bank after the fair.
   
   
9. Indiana Arts Building  Arts and culinary competitions at the State Fair are judged and displayed in the Indiana Arts Building.  There’s so much to explore – quilts, dollhouses, decorated cakes, baked cookies, decorative antiques, photography, paintings, calligraphy – but this is usually one of my last stops at the fair, so I’m usually too tired to take in all of it.  For example there was apparently a category for “ugliest lamp” I missed.  I saw the first and second place winners on Facebook, and they’re definitely ugly!  I always make a point to view the featured winners on the first floor and photography on the second floor.  Photography is one of the biggest competition categories.  My super talented friend Lisa Jamison enters photos in the fair each year.  She entered four beautiful photos in this year’s competition and won two honorable mention ribbons.  I’m absolutely in awe of this still life of hers!  Be sure to check out more of her work and follow her on Facebook!
10. Normandy Barn  This 1930s dairy barn was originally located in Traders Point and then donated to the Fair in 1998. In 2008 it was moved inside the fairgrounds and restored.  I think it’s just a really neat historic building. Inside you’ll find exhibits like honeybees and an interactive Augmented Reality Sandbox, where you can create colorful topographic maps demonstrating the relationship between soil and water.
    

Notably missing from the fair this year was one of my favorites, the Livestock Nursey, where you used to be able to see newborn calves and even calves as they were being born.  There was a new Animal Town exhibit instead which I didn’t really care for.  I also still miss the gift shop gazebo that was torn down a couple years ago.

Did you go to the Indiana State Fair or another State Fair – or any fair – this year?  If so what are your must-sees and must-dos?