Next City: Vallejo, CA / Solany County Fair

Hello again, Adventurers!

The next place in our travels is Vallejo, CA!

Let's point out the obvious (for people in the Solano County/Bay Area) first. Vallejo has a bad reputation for not being a good city. Even when we were talking to others about going to the city for our next trip, we got a lot of jokes about unsavory things located there, and questions about what we could possibly want to see there. 

For those of you who don't live in the area, and may not have heard about Vallejo before, we would just like to make sure that you get a balanced view of the city. Every town has some bad parts, but our job with these trips is to highlight the good things about every city we find. With that said, let's move on :)

Vallejo hosts the Solano County Fair every year. Being new up here, we did not want to miss the chance to see the fair for our county, and we are so glad that we didn't because we got a lot of information for our future trips! More on that later. First, let's look at the map of Vallejo.

The city of Vallejo includes historic Mare Island as well as several parks and hiking trails and natural places to visit. The fairgrounds are across the street from one of the major attractions in Vallejo: Six Flags-Discovery Kingdom. Although it's a great addition to Vallejo, which brings in a lot of commerce and attention to the city, we wanted to focus on the parts that are less well known or overlooked.

That brings us first to the county fair. Growing up in LA county in SoCal, we were used to the big fair there. We still haven't been to one quite so large and all consuming. However, having visited several fairs up here, we both realized the appeal of smaller fairs. It's more about the people who live in the county, and the highlighting those cities. That is the purpose of fairs, but, if like us, you are from SoCal or a large city area, that might not be apparent to you. I still don't remember any of the LA fairs I've ever been to in my life, featuring and celebrating the cities that comprise it.

Solano's fair did a fantastic job of this. Every city was represented (Rio Vista was a bit sad, but the rest were fantastic) and we could really see that the county valued the people who live and work within it.

So, without further ado, please enjoy our pictures/tidbits about the Solano County Fair :)

From the outside, the fair looks pretty small, but once you step inside, you see how far back it goes. We got there after noon and had a full day of exploring the fair.

 

I loved the trash cans. They were all decorated like this. It was a small touch that made it really cute. 

  

 

  You can't see the light on top of the car, but this is a taxi.

 

Remember these mail boxes? They were part of the Solano County display at the State Fair :)

This is Vallejo's booth. I didn't pay much attention to the stuff in the background when we were there because we were busy talking to the volunteers about what to do the next time we were in Vallejo, and explaining our blog. When looking at the pictures I started to wonder why there was a giant couch and all of the other colorful items in the background. Well, it turns out they have a Mad Hatter Holiday Festival in December! Pretty neat. We might have to go back and take part in that one.

Jenny Lynn and her Real Gone Daddies. We caught them at the tail end of their performance, but they were great. A combination of bluegrass and rockabilly, with some Elvis thrown in there as well. Take a listen in the video below.

 

We've never seen a flower competition in any of the other fair's we've been to. There were beautiful single flowers, plants, and special awards for flower arrangements. There was also this 'Picasso Car', which lead us into the art gallery.

 I thought it looked like a polar bear, so I dubbed it Jason's sculpture.

 We are in the middle of a healthy eating plan together, and Jason mourned for the Orange Chicken that he could not eat. Haha :)

These kids displayed their self-defense techniques. The blonde girl on the left was pretty bad-ass and took it more seriously than most of the others. There's also a tiny little kid in the front who was adorable and kept looking at the others to make sure he was doing the correct moves.

 This ride started out with just the blue part showing. Kids sit in parachute straps and are lifted up as the red/white part pop out and then the ride releases and they fall about five feet. I know we're immature, but it looks reeeeaaaaaallly awkward when it lifts up above the blue.

A cat themed table setting!

The most appropriate saying for anyone who owns cats: "The cook is not responsible for cat hair in the food".

The collections always make us laugh. This person collects chicken postcards. It's so random! Some of the cards are hilariously weird.

Cow collection.

Pig races are a staple at every fair.

Our team did not win a single race, haha.

We had the tiny red pig on the last race. It was comically smaller than the rest of them, and came in dead last, but looked adorable doing so.

They took a cue from Chick-fil-A. It still makes me laugh.

This guy looks good enough to eat ;-)

 Creepy snapping turtle.

 

Even though it looks really rough, this crocodile (alligator?) was really soft and squishy when you felt him.

Jason wanted to press his luck with this manly rooster.

We promise you, this chick is not dead, just adorably tired.

This guy was not satisfied by the hay in his pen, so he was stretching out to get some off the hay bale.

 

These dogs were so cute and talented. They jump higher in the air than any dogs we've seen before.

The one thing you could really tell after watching this show was how much he really loved his dogs.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Solano County Fair, and were very proud of the representation Fairfield had. The second part of Vallejo will be posted later, which will be the actual city of Vallejo.

Until next time, keep exploring!

-Katrina and Jason