We got rain coats!

     We are ready for anything now.  Dan got the one that had the picture of the crab fishermen on the tag.  I got the one that was cuter.  They were surprisingly hard to find- all the coats they have for sale right now are winter coats.  It is usually rainy here.  But at least it is still pretty when driving around.

 

     The Minnesota State Fair is something to be treasured and cherished by all who know of it.  Don’t get me wrong, the Alaska State Fair was not at all bad, it’s just that the Minnesota fair is special.  Just check out the difference in the maps of the fair: Minnesota Alaska

     It turned out to be a good fair to walk around while pregnant though.  It was cool, not very crowded, and we probably covered the entire fair 5 times in about 4 hours.  We saw some giant cabbage, which was neat, but it was strange that all their livestock were in one building… and it was not even close to full.  It was a very conquerable fair.  No particularly fascinating food, but we did enjoy a spectacular pretzel. 

Yes, they died his poof purple.

My pregnancy app says my baby is the size of a rutabaga.  I don't think it means this one.

 

General view of the fair.

     This evening was sponsored by House of Prayer staff who gave us tickets to the fair and to STYX for Dan’s going away gift.  Concerts here are crazy different than the grandstand.  One neat thing is that you can actually hear the music outside the concert area fairly clearly so in the afternoon, we were able to enjoy their sound check while walking around.  STYX was great.  We both thought that their voices were still surprisingly good especially considering how high they sing for some of their songs.   It was a fairly short concert that started at six.  The fair doesn’t close until ten.  It was nice that at the end of the concert we were still able to walk around the fair and everything was still open.  Our little Cheppit (baby) didn’t mind the concert too much- VERY squirmy at the beginning, but then he calmed down and couldn’t have cared less.

The view before the concert was pretty neat with the mountains in the background.  They disappeared later.
 

We could have gotten quite a bit closer, but I wanted to be in the back so I could sit against the wall when required.

     It was raining a lot on Sunday morning and we were kind of concerned about a craptastic weather day, but our whole fair time was great, about 30 seconds of sprinkles and that’s it.  For a while it got really windy and I thought I was in Fargo, but then I saw a mountain.  The drive home was super crappy though.  The fair is about an hour north on AK 1/the Glenn Highway (the only road that goes north out of town) and we enjoyed a beautiful drive there on a nice normal (to us) freeway, but driving home was pretty rainy.  The roads here have so many trucks driving on them that they have huge tire divots that collect the water and our teeny tiny car had some teeny tiny hydroplaning problems.  What made me mad was that I was going probably 10mph slower than everyone else, but I seemed to be the only one having problems.  I talked to some people at church though and they said its not just me, people drive crazy on that road an many people end up in the ditches.  Of course it will be even worse in the winter time.  On the plus side, we really have no need of this road unless we go on a trip, which probably won't happen now until next spring anyway.  The danger of this road did surprise me though.  One would think the 2 lane highway heading south weaving around mountains and stuff would be more dangerous, but no.
     Next time I hope to post some pictures of our apartment and the church Dan is working in so you can get a feel for where we are.  We decided not to get internet in our apartment so I'll probably be posting on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons here, so evening in Minnesota.  Hopefully I'll have enough to say to keep it interesting.