The 2022 Bloomsburg Fair is beginning to wind down and will close for the year at 9:00 pm tomorrow. With that in mind, here are a few non-food related photos taken at the fair this year.
I was a teenager the last time I went on one of the carnival rides at the Bloomsburg Fair, but I take a walk back to that part of the fairgrounds to see what they've got. None of the rides really stood out to me this year, but it was pretty cool that they repurposed the seats from an old Scrambler ride to turn them into park bench seats.
There's a lot of history to be found throughout the fairgrounds. Much of this has to do with the farming and manufacturing that takes place in central Pennsylvania. It's pretty cool to be able to see an old piece of machinery like this steamroller.
There are hundreds of animals at the fair to see. For some reason, I seem to have a special kinship with the goats, who run up to lick and nuzzle my hand every year that I see them. Insert your own joke about me being the devil here.
There are also a lot of crafts and artwork for sale throughout the fairgrounds. In previous years, we've gotten carved signs, animal statues for the back yard, and other crafts of various sizes. The thing that really caught my eye this year were these adorable little wooden animals from artist Alexx Smith of ArtSmith Customs. The animals are hand-drawn and then lazered into the wood to make them easy to color using a fine-tipped permanent marker. Each one has a hole drilled in the top and comes with a keychain loop if you'd like to put it with your keys, although I'm sure it would be just as nice to hang from some string as a decoration or a child's necklace.
They had a series of Halloween keychains available, so I bought a set of them. They're all nice, but my favorites are the ghost, the cute little bat, and the jack-o-lantern in the bottom left corner. Instead of using them as keychains, I'm going to buy a little Halloween tree and some orange hooks and use them as tree decorations - after we color them, of course.
You can see more work from ArtSmith Customs on Facebook, and if you see their stand at an event, be sure to say hi to Ezra, a beautiful and very friendly German Shepard puppy who is training to be a service dog.
