Wicomico County Fair 2018 in pictures and text (part 1)

I don’t think I’ve spent this much time at the Wicomico County Fair in, well, ever. Once I get rolling, all the photos will get their own caption.

But the original reason I showed up was to see how my photos did in competition.

If you look closely, one of my winning photos is next to the large yellowish Best of Show, which was first in the category (mine was second.) Another is on the top left of the right-hand screen.
This is one of my winners I really liked, one that was computer-modified with a filter. The shot was taken at Luray Caverns in Virginia when we were there earlier this year.

I got four second-place photos, which is pretty decent for an amateur like me. Three of them were taken on the same vacation.

But I wasn’t the only one looking for a ribbon, or more. Hundreds and hundreds of exhibits of all sorts filled the Carriage House.

The local 4-H clubs were taking a lot of space this year.
Others in both adult and junior categories exhibited the best of agriculture and arts.
The prizes for those considered Best of Show.
This helps pay for the few dollars I’ll receive for having prize-winning entries.

But exhibits and judging weren’t just reserved for the Carriage House. There were an assortment of barnyard animals on display at the fair as well.

I’m not sure what constitutes a prize-winning cow, but these three were seeking that distinction.
My wife likes goats, so hopefully she saw this one.
Beyond whether this one has plenty of white meat or dark meat, it’s a striking bird.

Animals who were simply being judged on their cuteness factor to the young set were part of the petting zoo.

The kids had a petting zoo, which was probably a good idea with the animals on exhibit being judged.

And then you have another sort of exhibit and judging in one of my favorite sections of the event: Friday evening’s car show.

This car is the same age as me (a 1964 Ford Country Sedan station wagon) but probably in much better shape. I seem to recall my aunt and uncle had a slightly later version of this Ford product.

I could have added several more photos of old cars I liked, but I decided to be nice and spare you.

Friday also featured another sort of competition: the Maryland High School Rodeo. Yes, there is such a thing, and the Wicomico County Fair was the opener to its 2018-19 season.

This young flag-bearer got the Maryland High School Rodeo season underway.

I didn’t sit through all of the events, but there was plenty of barrel racing, roping, and even bull riding on the Friday night docket.

Adjacent to the rodeo going on was the shady main lane of the Fair.

They were still painting the barrels when I first arrived Friday afternoon. But this wasn’t the main entrance anymore, as I’ll explain in a bit.
A few businesses (and political candidates) had the good fortune to be in the shade most of the weekend.

There were also other regular staples of the WCF I ran across, too.

The Phillips Wharf Environmental Center always brings this setup to the fair for the kids to check out.
This was inside the Maryland Department of Agriculture mobile exhibit. Besides the information kids could learn, adults probably most enjoyed the very comfortable air conditioning.

I thought I had a picture of this mobile exhibit from the outside as well as the Bookmobile, but I guess not. Funny thing about the Maryland Department of Agriculture mobile exhibit: there are actually two such vehicles now. We got the newer one with the better air conditioning, Montgomery County got the older one this weekend. Serves ’em right.

But they try to hit as many fairs, festivals, etc. as they can. Makes sense as agriculture is the number 1 Maryland industry. (And here I thought it was dependence on the federal government. Nope, saving politics for part 2.)

This group hopes to keep it number one.

Another group I didn’t know existed. They had a skid steer competition over the weekend.

I was happy to see these folks do better, too. Explanation in moments.

Despite what you may see in this picture, which I actually took on Sunday, this train did a lot better business than it did last year in a different location.

I’m going to close out part 1 by giving my kudos to the WCF for the way it was set up. They finally figured out that most of us park at the parking lot by the Little League field so the county built a small footbridge over the swale next to that lot. Most people would thus come in by the Carriage House and work their way up toward the main part of the Fair. Not only did it help the train operators out, I thought it was a better flow than parking people in the lot off Old Ocean City Road because it allowed them to close Blue Ribbon Drive and put it to use, as I’ll illustrate to lead off part 2.

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