Alaskan Cruise, Part Ate

Howdy, adventure seekers!   In our last thrilling chapter, we had visited our last port-of-call on our Alaskan cruise and were now sailing towards Seattle, our home port.   However, the adventures don't end there!   I will now regale you with tales about the drive back home to Pomona, and the (arguably) fascinating stops along the way!   Some of this may be broken out into Restaurant reviews, so that you can easily access them when planning your own trip up the coast.  Hopefully, I can finish these vacation posts before summer...

Our first stop was in Puyallup, for the Western Washington Fair.  The Puyallup Fair is one of the top ten fairs in the country, and a great place to spend an afternoon.   The large assortment of food, rides and other attractions is enough to guarantee a full day.  I could have literally eaten my way through the fairgrounds.   They have some great barbecue venues and other tempting treats along the way.   My travel partner's favorite was a booth that sold "the freshest ice cream in the world" and they meant it.  They actually made scooped ice cream to order via a quick-freeze technique that I don't quite understand, so please don't ask me.  I don't know, I tell you, so don't ask!   Another treat  found all over the fair was "Krusty Pups" which is just a fancy name for a corn dog.

However, the big item to eat at this fair is - believe it or not - a scone.   That's right, a scone.   To be more precise, a Fisher scone.  Fisher has been selling scones at the fair since 1915.  They bake the scones fresh at their booths, then lather each one with whipped butter and raspberry preserves.  Fisher operates several scone booths throughout the fair, and every one of them has a line.  They were delicious, but hardly enough to fill one up at the fair.  But they make a delightful appetizer before I headed to the barbecue stand (of which there were several)

The other big attraction at the Puyallup Fair is the rides.  They have a huge assortment of rides that take up a large part of the real estate.   Many of them are unique, one-of-a-kind rides that you can't ride anywhere else.   One example is Kersplash, which is pictured below.   It's kind of a mix between a roller coaster and a flume ride.

They also have a classic 1917 PTC carousel that was originally a portable fairground carousel until it was permanently installed here.  However, the piece de resistance is their wooden roller coaster.   Originally built in 1935, it's the last wooden roller coaster to be found at a fairground and has been declared a Roller Coaster Classic by ACE.   It is only open 21 days every year, making it a hard coaster for an out-of-towner like me to ride.  The entire structure has recently been rebuilt, and the coaster is running better than ever.   It's the most popular ride at the fair, attracting lines of almost 2 hours at the busiest times.  It's hard to get a good picture of the coaster due to the many attractions around it, but here are a few...

Beyond the food and the rides, there were plenty of other attractions to keep you busy.   My favorite was the sheep riding, where young kids pay money to try and ride a sheep, much like cowboys at a rodeo try to ride a bucking bronco.   They don't stay on long, but it was entertaining to watch.

Once we were done with the fair, we began our trip down the coast towards home.   We drove across the border into Oregon and stayed on the outskirts of Portland.   The next stop would be Tillamook, home of the infamous Tillamook service station.   I also heard that there may be some dairy goods there.   Stay tuned, more to come!