Kenzie Blogs Life: Goats

Brewing in the Mountains

7:30:00 AM

I love exploring. (You probably guessed that). I love tagging along just to see what something is like. Being in different places means there are a lot of different things to see, my step-dad really loves breweries. I tagged along (mostly because I didn't want to just sit in the hotel room).

There are so many breweries in Asheville, but they are all fun, and most of them are dog friendly! Our first stop in the search for stickers (which is the main reason we even went out into the rain), was at a brewery hidden off the street. There was the cutest puppy there and I couldn't resist giving it a little pet!

Everyone working at the breweries was really nice, each one had a unique inside.

I don't mind going into the breweries, sometimes I ordered a sweet tea, but I really just wanted the experience of the town rather than the experience of sitting inside a hotel room.

Where are your favorite places to go for a drink? Do you have a favorite brewery near you?

I hope you don't get stuck in the rain!

Have a great week!

x Kenzie

Animals

The Great Minnesota Get Together!

12:00:00 PM

It’s inevitable, the Summer of 2014 is coming to a close. For some of you it may have already come to an end, which leaves you in school waiting until next year!

With a little more than a week left of my Summer holiday, my family and I headed off to Minnesota (yes again, we go there a lot). My sister was bringing her friends along, as a celebration for her birthday and staying in the hotel connected to the Mall Of America. Whilst the three of them were shopping, my aunt, uncle, mom, step-dad, cousin and I headed out to the Minnesota State Fair! The fair has been around since 1859 though in 1885 the fair had officially obtained a permanent ground for it to be held on. Since then, it’s grown. A lot.

I hadn't really spent a full day at the fair since about 2010, so it had been awhile. The day started off with a bit of rain, but I was too excited to be going again that I really wasn’t going to let that worry me. The weather did stay overcast though, which in the end might have been better as it was still humid and would have been ten times hotter had the sun actually been shining. The very first thing we did was create a game plan, what we wanted to see, eat and where to go, then we put it to action.

Our first stop was at a food booth selling Gizmo’s. It looked like a hot dog, but covered in cheese and lots of it. A Gizmo is really ground beef and Italian sausage with a special sauce and seasonings, covered with melted mozzarella cheese and served on a toasted Italian roll! Sounds healthy doesn't it? Don’t worry, I purposely ate healthily all week knowing that this was going to be a really bad day for eating!

We then moved on to look through the Campers, if you don’t know what a camper is it’s basically a trailer that people hook up to their cars (mostly trucks) and pull behind. Inside the camper, is usually a small bunk bed, a queen or king sized bed, a kitchen and sitting area as well. It’s like a tour bus but smaller.

After moving on from the campers, we stopped to try other foods as well. It had only been twenty minutes. Don’t worry, everyone was sharing and not buying a full size for themselves! There was jerky, and samples of popcorn as well as Pronto Pups!

(Kettle Corn) (Turkey Jerky)

Coca-Cola even had a “personalize your coke” booth, which of course I had to try!

We did finally make it to the Brownie stand, where they bake fresh brownies right there and serve cold milk to go along with it. They’re so good! There were also amazing fresh chocolate chip cookies at a booth called Sweet Martha's! Every time I go to the fair, it's a definite must stop!

At the fair, there are loads of activities and buildings to take a walk through. You can take a peak at new inventions, see things for your home, watch demonstrations, try out some games and go on some rides! There’s also an international bazaar, which was really fun to see. There was a man playing an neat looking instrument, booths ranging from Africa, Thailand and Ireland!

Rides! Inventions

Home Goods

"How to put out a fire" demo

Taken at the Baazar

Haunted Mansion

We stopped in the dairy barn just in time to see the Princess of the Milky Way getting her head carved from actual Butter! It looked really cold inside the glass case she was sitting in, as she was wearing a winter jacket and gloves!

Sticking to the cold theme, we took a short walk through some Christmas lights, which were really fun and made me wish winter wasn't actually cold in Wisconsin.

We did stop, at one of my favorite places, the animal barns! In it’s own unique way the Minnesota State fair holds a barn full of baby animals and their mothers. The fair offers its visitors a first hand experience at viewing the actual live birth of pigs, cows and sheep! They also have an incubator where eggs from different types of poultry are warmed and watched to hatch. The little animals are so adorable! I really wanted to take one home! We were just in time to see the newborn pigs! After seeing that, I spotted my favorite treat to cool down with!

Shaved ice! They had a variety of flavors and I could mix and match them so I went with strawberry and peach! It was delicious and really helped cool me down since it was so humid outside!

I'm wearing Turquoise and Caicos on my nails by Essie!

As we made our way through the fair, there were tons of other food booths as well. Flowering Onions, French Fries, Lemonade, Tacos, Poutine (remember when I wrote about Irish Fries?). There was gummy bears on a stick, olives on a stick, pickles on a stick, you name it it was probably on a stick!

Flowering Onions, Lemonade stand

Tacos

Poutine

Strawberries & Creme Deep Fried Olives on a stick

Sweet Martha's Cookies!

Cheese Curds (Clearly not as good as Wisconsin as we're the dairy state)

We also went into the cow, sheep and pig barn next! There were more piglets which I did get the chance to pet! It was so cute!

We then moved on to the horse barn. Even though I had been to the Minnesota State fair before, I don’t ever remember being in the horse barn. They had some really unique ones standing there, and they were so cute! I love horses and part of me wanted to get on one and ride off!

We moved away from the animals, onto tasting more food and taking a ride on the giant colorful slide! The view from the slide was pretty neat as well!

We did wander into a part of the fair that happened to be next to the grandstand where we could hear Toby Keith doing his sound check! It was so cool! They have a lot of great acts and big names that come to the fair. Last time I was here I was able to see Tim Mcgraw and Julianne Hough!

The Grandstand

In one of the buildings they had a man blowing bubbles from Liquid Nitrogen! I thought that was really cool, it didn't feel very cold though, but when I blew the bubble away it disappeared into a cloud of white mist.

The woman behind me is clearly shocked by the whole thing.

(I'm wearing this flowy tank top by Atlast)

At the end of the fair, like usual, we let our tired and sore legs and feet rest by using the sky ride. We had a neat view from up high, and the breeze was perfect to cool down with.