Come For The Funeral; Stay For The Fair

If Will Shortz was writing this post, he might have titled it Synesthesia, since this is really just tasting notes from our day at the fair. When we first arrived, I was feeling light-headed since, because of traffic, it had already been more than two hours since I had last eaten. So, I made a quick emergency stop at the first booth we came to and had a brat. Rich asked if that was a hot dog or a local child and I told him, "I didn't ask what it was made out of."
This list is not exhaustive, but the next stop was here at the deep fried Macaroni and Cheese booth. It was delicious with a crusty cheese outside with a creamy filling, which coincidentally probably describes your arteries after eating it.
Next we had funnel cakes so we could compare them to the ones at the Alaska State Fair that we're going to twice in the next two weeks.  Karen didn't finish hers, so I was able to compare it to mine. Both good, although looking at the app when we got home, I see we could have had them on a stick. I'm not sure how that would have improved the experience, but when in Des Moines...
We went to see the butter cow, but the line was too long to get up close. The other celebrity there that day was failed presidential candidate, Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas. We didn't even try to see him even though he, as the saying goes, thinks he's something on a stick. There were real things on sticks to be had and we did, for example,  Karen ate here:

The use case for a skewer here is obvious, and the rib on a stick was a hit.
From there we went to look at crafts and art. Well, Karen did. I went  here, and had apple pie on a stick. The pie itself wasn't great, but aside from stabbing oneself repeatedly in the palate, I couldn't understand what the point (ha, ha) of the stick was. For comparison purposes, I had their apple turnover and apple cookie, and they were both good, and easily hand-held. The fair also had sandwiches on a stick and that just seems wrong. The sandwich was created to be eaten with the hands. Sticks seem like  technology for technology's sake, and a perversion of the very idea of sandwiches.
On the way out of the fairgrounds, as is our tradition, we grabbed a few random items of food to ensure a nauseating ride home. We stayed the night in Des Moines, and the next morning we drove to Minneapolis, and the next morning, we flew back to Anchorage.