Florida State Fair

Today we went to the Florida State Fair in Tampa.  It's a really good fair and you couldn't get a better day's entertainment for $8.00!

One of the areas we like to visit within the fair is "Cracker Country"  which is very educational, showing a lot of the old ways of life of the "crackers".  This is showing the squeezing of the sugar cane - the mule walked around and turned the crank on the machine.

This little girl was doing a great job of demonstrating how the crackers got their name.  They pastured cattle in the open areas and cracked these long whips

  to round them up.

This fellow was demonstrating some sort of carving.

Paul was having a good chat with the school marm in the old schoolhouse.

A show we really enjoyed was an alligator show.

This is an albino alligator - they are very rare and are only in captivity as far as anyone knows.

"Uncle Sam wants YOU.....to take his picture."  That's what the guy said to me.

I honestly don't think this poor critter could lift his head because of the weight of his horns.

We enjoyed about a 45 minute rodeo, but it was not good for taking pictures.

I love this picture of someone feeding the giraffe!

There was also a very good 45 minute circus, but I wasn't supposed to take pictures there.

I loved watching the heavy horse pull - it was quite different from the Port Hope Fair one!

This poor horse fell down, but fortunately he got right back up again, with no apparent harm.

We watched a little bit of a lumberjack show.

This was a really good bmx, skateboard, and motorcycle show.  I don't know if you will be able to watch this short video or not.

There was a bear show as well, with 2 young grzzlies and 2 brown bears.  They were pretty amazing!

All in all, we had a really good day, but a long one!  I'm off to bed!