Fair Fare!

Our first stop at the Central Washington State Fair was St. Paul Cathedral School's elephant ear booth, where former colleagues gave me a wave. Well, the one who wasn't stretching elephant ear dough did. It was teacher's shift at the booth, and a chance to say hi to several of the folks I worked with till I retired this summer.

We always try to choose our fair treats from local organizations. The elephant ear that we split between us held us off till time for barbecue beef sandwiches at Young Life, our annual fair dinner. For a return visit we might choose the lamburgers at another booth.

Celebrate What's Great!

The 115th annual Central Washington State Fair opened in Yakima on Friday with the theme this year being Celebrate What's Great!"

I thought I would ride to the top of the Giant Wheel and get some pictures of the midway from above.


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Then I thought; "Nah! No! No way!"
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Neither did I take any shots from the Sky Tram, the Circle of Fire, the Drop Zone, or the Big Sling.
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No, you will just have to appreciate the Fair from the ground with me, or else stop by yourself for the rides, exhibits, and some fair food.

Night Glow

One of the special events during the Prosser Balloon Rally is Night Glow on Saturday night. Five or six of the balloons in attendance fire up and "dance" to music at the high school football field. It is quite a spectacle.

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Unfortunately, our schedule did not let us get there last night for the show, but I offer a Night Glow photo from a previous rally. Be sure to click to enlarge--this looks great full screen.

Balloons up!

Thirty balloons launched today. There was no way to get them all in one picture. I will be posting more balloon rally photos at Katney's Kaboodle later today. This photo will enlarge if you click it.

Balloon Rally in Prosser

This isn't much of a balloon picture, but I didn't realize that they would be launching already this morning till we saw a few balloons in the sky in the distance. We were back too late to get any launch or flight pictures today, but there were several balloon teams assembling their equipment at the Prosser Airport. The biggest launch is tomorrow early, with Night Glow tomorrow night--and we will set the alarm so as not to miss the launch and hopefully get to some of the night glow as well (other obligations may interfere.)

More hop harvest

You can click this one to enlarge so you can see the workers up there on top of the lead vehicle. They cut the hop vine and sting from the trellis and throw it onto the truck that is following.

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With so many new acres planted in hops this year, this is new equipment. The load trucks are larger, and I have never seen an enclosed rig like the one in front in years past. The ones used before were like this tractor rig that I posted a couple of weeks ago doing some other work in the yard nearest us.

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Tomorrow we are headed to the Central Washington State Fair, and on Saturday the Prosser Balloon Rally. I will keep an eye out for more good hop harvest pictures as well.

Harvest time--poles stripped

Just over two weeks ago I posted this. That same spot now looks like this. Hop harvest generally runs day and night, and a yard is stripped pretty quickly. This is not the part that is actually "picking" the hops, though. The strings of hop vines, cut near the bottom and then cut from the top and loaded into trucks are taken to the hop picker, where they are hooked to conveyor belts and the hop cones stripped from the vines to be moved into the kiln.

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Over the next few days I hope to get some more and better pictures of the workers in various stages of the process.

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Other crops are being harvested in the Valley at the same time as the hops. Yesterday I followed a tractor that spanned the road from edge to edge before heading off into a recently harvested corn field.