West Virginia State Fair- Lewisburg, WV

 In early August I went to the West Virginia State Fair with my family. The fair has always been an end of sumer hurrah for my family, and every year we get pretty excited for it. The fair is full of rides, games, food, exhibits, and contests. We ride everything and enjoy walking around seeing crazy things like alligator wrestling, pig races and cow pie throwing contests.  In my opinion, however, by far the best part of the fair is the food. Every year I have thought about getting something in particular, but always decided against it and regretted it later. This year I decided that I would finally get it - a deep fried candy bar.

My Mom's LARGE bag of Kettle Corn!

   This year we were able to go on opening day and we were there just as everything was opening.  As soon as we bought our tickets for the fair and entered the gates, I made a beeline for the fried candy bar stand.  The stand is the second store from the opening gates at the fair. Coincidentally, the candy bar stand also happens to be right next to a kettle corn stand, which is my mom's favorite fair food by far. Every year my mom gets a bag of kettle corn, and has to choose between the two sizes, small and large. Every year before the fair my mom says she will get the small because she eats too much and she feels sick the next day; but every time the fair comes around, she somehow always ends up getting the large bag.  This year was no different, a large bag of kettle corn starts the day.  Anyways, back to the fried candy bar. Although there were many great-sounding choices like Twix, Milky Way, and Butterfinger, I went with a Snickers.  It turns out my fried snickers was the first fried candy bar of the fair! It only took a minute or two for them to fry up a candy bar, and once I got it, I could barely contain myself. I was about to take a giant bite into the  candy bar that I had been waiting so long for, but as I began to take that big bite, I stopped myself, and just in time. Because the candy bars are made to order, they are straight out of the frier when you get them, making them extremely hot. So after it cooled down a considerable amount, I got to work. The candy bar was good, but not what I expected it would be. I didn't feel like I got enough of the snickers, but you know what, it was still pretty good.

   Thankfully the fried snickers was not the food highlight of the state fair, or we would have had a

MMMmmmm…. Bacon AND Donut!

pretty disappointing day. Good thing we didn't stop our fair-food tasting there, because the next thing we ate was legendary. As we continued down the fair food lane, my brother announced that he was getting hungry, and wanted a hot dog. We stopped at the nearest hot dog stand, which happened to be the same one we went to last year, where they had a bacon-wrapped corn dog! This year they had something new; The MAPLE BACON DONUT DOG. The Maple Bacon Donut Dog was a hot dog, wrapped in bacon, stuck through the middle of a glazed donut, and drizzled with maple syrup and bacon bits. I had the first bite, and had to hold myself back from eating the entire thing. This is the fair food you hear about - something so crazy they just can't serve it anywhere else.  It was soooooo good, warm, crispy, sweet and salty, almost like a food one could only dream about. All in all, definitely the best fair food and maybe junk food I've ever had.

Butt Fries? Yes… Butt Fries

   We continued our quest for crazy foods and found BUTT FRIES!  When I saw the sign I was a little nervous, but then we found out they were french fries piled with pulled pork, cheese, scallions and sour cream.  They were very filling and really tasty.  They were kind of like nachos, just with fries and pulled pork.  We had our choice of several bar-b-q sauces for it and tried several.      

You can't go wrong with the classics!

   The last thing I want to mention is a staple at the WV State Fair - Ben and Ellen donuts.  I don't know how long Ben and Ellen have been coming to the fair, but it seems that everyone there eats at least one of their donuts.  We actually saw a list one time of the top things to do in the area and eating one of these donuts was one of the top ranked activities!  At the fair, for seventy-five cents, you can get a warm, delicious, fluffy, cinnamon sugar coated
donut.  Mmmmm…… Donuts. Definitely worth the seventy-five cents.

I think it was a really good fair food day.  We all enjoyed trying new, crazy things as well as having a couple of our traditional favorites.  I can't wait to see what new things they come up with for next year!