My first Utah State Fair...

All these years I've lived in Utah...I've never been to the state fair.  Or any state fair for that matter.  I've heard stories about it, how there are lots of farm animals, contests, crafts, and fried everything.  So when my friend invited me to go with her family (her dad had entered some vegetables in the contest), I was more than happy to join them to check it out.
We first stopped at a building that held all the crafts and culinary (...!!!) contests.

I. WANT.THIS. QUILT. This is the most creative quilt design I've ever seen!
There were also baked goods entries.  Some of the categories included yeast breads, quick breads, cookies, sourdough breads, etc...

 

What kinda bugged me was the judging criteria.  I mean, look at this banana bread--it totally collapsed!  And yet it won second place???  ...Well, as much as I would love to enter something in next year, I feel like I would be cheating for some reason...

We went outside to a light drizzle;  the glitzy, blingy ferris wheel jutting out into a grey, dingy sky.  There were plenty of games and rides typical of amusement parks.

But we couldn't forget why we were there to begin with.  My friend's dad had entered a vegetable (an Asian eggplant) so we had to see how he did...

Tomatoes after tomatoes after tomatoes. The entire place were filled with tables strewn with vegetables of all sorts...

...including this mutant carrot. This particular one won first place in the "Oddity" category.

 

Giant pumpkin contest.  The winner weighed 620 lbs.

 



Then we spotted her dad's eggplant...which had won first place!  Congrats!

We then ventured into the farm animal section.  Some were on sale, including this adorable bunny.

 

 

 

The barn had your usual farm animals; cows, pigs, sheep, goats, etc. 

 

The piglets were just so cute. And curious. One was so curious that it pressed its snout up against my phone right when I was about to snap a photo.

Every year, a local sculptor makes a sculpture...using a solid block of butter.  Impressive isn't it?

State fair was fun!  My friend encouraged me to enter some baked goods next year but...that's a definitive maybe.