Tulsa, OK

Sandy and I stayed in Tulsa today.  First things first, she found a quaint little doughnut shop with a fun proprietor.  Coffee and a doughnut at a nice outdoor café in an unfamiliar town, what a nice way to start the day. 

Oklahoma has two large cities, Tulsa and Oklahoma City.  So, which city gets the Oklahoma State Fair?  They both do.  The Tulsa State Fair is currently underway.  After our doughnuts we drove to the Fairgrounds.  Immediately upon our arrival we ran into a fair volunteer who, like me, is museum docent and owns a sailboat.  We enjoyed conversing and before we left he transferred to me a copy of a picture he had taken at sunrise of the giant oilman that stands in front of the fair.

I too took a picture of the same oilman.  For perspective, note Sandy sitting on the oilman’s shoe.

State fairs are just a lot of fun.  We walked through the huge exhibition halls where a lot of people were trying to sell us everything, but we resisted.

We also walked down the Midway. It was good to see young families and teenage couples enjoying the rides and games.  Of course we did not get on any of the rides and I did not try to win a kewpie doll for Sandy. 

Today was the steer judging.  We walked through the barns and then found a place in the arena to watch the judging.  We picked our favorite contestant, a gray steer with silver markings led around by a little girl that reminded us of our granddaughter Katharyne.  We must know our cattle pretty well, as that was the one that won first place.  In walking through the prep barns, we got to watch the cattle being primped up like a young woman getting ready to go to the prom.  

Finally, you haven’t been to the fair unless you have had some fair food.  I bought a ribeye sandwich from the Cattleman's’ Association stand right outside the cattle barn.  I couldn’t help it, all that beef on display.  Sandy felt eating the sandwich in front of all those nice cattle was very inconsiderate of me.  Sandy had “Moink Balls on a Stick”.  A beef meatball (the Moo), wrapped in bacon (the oink), moo + oink = Moink.  All this on a stick with barbecue sauce poured over it.  And, it was healthy too.