Del Mar Fair #1

So many rocks ... decisions, decisions
I love how excited Johnny is!
Minerals glowing under special lights
Petrified poop ... for real!Yehaw!
Ride 'em Cowboy!
This is the monster truck we got to ride at the end
These are Rocks and Minerals that Johnny got on this trip for his BDay
From grab bags
From Harmony Grove bookstore
Gifts from Grandma

We had planned to take a trip to San Diego for a vacation and to visit my family later in the summer, after mid-July. However, because of Johnny's quickly growing fascination with rocks and minerals ... and the one week this summer that my sister Amy's kids were out of preschool ... I ended up making a rather precipitous decision to move the trip up so we could make it out to the Del Mar Fair before it ended on July 5th. The really unfortunate part was that Keith wasn't comfortable making plans that quickly to join us for a part of the trip. We missed him, and held out hope that he'd make it out there, but no such luck this time. Our next trip will be all four of us for sure! We missed the once yearly Gem & Mineral show in Houston this year and I knew from experience that the Del Mar Fair has a fantastic one and would be a great place for Johnny to start building his own collection. As soon as we got to the Fair the first time, we headed directly to the G&M building and ended up spending at least 3 hours there that day. Sammy was a trooper, and was quite patient, considering this isn't really his hobby (although he really does like it too). After a bit of running around trying to figure out where different activities were, we watched a camel show, missed the swine race, walked thru the livestock barns, had a pony ride, listened to live jazz music while eating an ice cream cone, and walked through the bottom floor of the Fine Art building. We tried for the 3rd time of the day to catch the swine race, and missed it again! Arrghh! The good news is that while we were sitting in the empty bleachers we heard the sound of engines growling and walked into a big semi-enclosed arena to investigate. We were delighted to discover there was a Tuff Truck race going on and watched a bunch of really loud trucks race around a dirt track making tight turns and jumping dirt hills. One inexperienced driver fishtailed and his truck rolled onto its side ... and yes, I did get it on videotape! At the end of the race the three of us were able to ride on a firetruck monster truck for a fast and bouncy ride around the track. Needless to say, the boys LOVED it!