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Showing posts with the label fairs and festivals

NPR Road Trips: Fairs and Festivals (audiobook)

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Lots of Fun Published by HighBridge in 2012. Multicast Duration: about 1 hour. My family and I are avid fans of fairs and festivals. We like to wander around and experience the hullabaloo of all of the people, the noises of the midway, the incessant sales pitches of the guys trying to sell replacement windows or guttering and, of course, the animals. 2012 Indiana State Fair Midway. Photo by DWD. We just attended the Indiana State fair last weekend and spent an astounding 13 hours wandering around the giant circle of the fair (it is built around a one mile dirt track) seeing everything from Star Wars Stormtroopers to a petting zoo filled with week-old calves to a giant carving made of cheese (still being carved as we watched!). I learned about $261,000 John Deere Tractors, heard an acoustic blues band, bought a wallet and saw a clown marching band performance - all before we hit the midway! So, when I found this little audiobook of stories collected from NPR over the ye

Carnival Undercover by Bret Witter

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Fascinating book - lots of fun to read. Thoroughly enjoyable. "Who doesn't love a carnival, fair or amusement park? They have everything you could ask for: Fried food, dangerous-looking rides, macho games, freak shows, meat-on-a-stick, champion milking cows, and teenagers dressed up as giant stuffed animals...If that's not America, what is?" The Marion Co. Fair - Indianapolis. That's the opening quote of Carnival Undercover that tells you all the ins and outs of the carnival business - everything from the economics involved in owning a booth to how to become a carnie to ride safety to the freak shows. It also tells you how to win at certain games, the inside skinny on some of the major theme parks (did you know that Disney World has an underground vacuum powered garbage removal - much like the system at your bank's drive through window - so that you don't have to see any garbage being hauled through the park?) and which food booths to avoid at