A boot-scootin' good time

If you'd been here at one o'clock today, you'd have found the Vance girls stuffed into a giant Dodge Ram with our new friends Stephanie, Elise, Zoa, Hannah and Estelle, hustling on over to the county fair.

 

The Official Fair Logo

The fair promised to be a 'boot-scootin' good time. After seven and a half hours there, my boot crossed over from scootin' to draggin', but holy cow did we have fun.

There were 4H barns with 'the cutest baby lamb you've ever seen,' horses, pigs, bunnies, cows, you name it. And some very educational pig judging contests. (I had no idea what a pig would be rated on, but it turns out it's things like haunch size and the sway of the back.) There was also a Muttin' Bustin' contest in which four-year-olds attempted to ride sheep. Didn't go over well with my little animal rights activists.

The best thing about the fair was how mellow it was - there were so few people that the kids could roam with no worries about losing them. They ran around and rode all the rides for hours. The next best thing was the sites:

 

This truck sprays water on the ground to keep the dust down. Totally bizarre.

Sharp shooter #2

Sharp shooter #1

 

While we were at the fair, we had an amazing surprise: Stella's beloved kindergarten and first grade teacher, Brooke, stopped by. She's roadtripping back to California from Baltimore and swung through Bozeman on her way. We hung out and visited the chickens, pigs and sugar gliders together. What a treat.

     

 By the end of the day, I had finally convinced Stella, who's not a thriller-ride kind of girl, that the swings were not to be missed.

With the sun toasting us in that low-to-the-horizon, orangish-red ideal way, the scent of funnel cakes wafting up - almost edible itself, and a perfect amount of exhaustion coarsing through our veins, we swung off into the night.