The Blaine Festival is a pretty standard city festival, but still a favorite of mine.  They have special “shows” to watch – like a community dog show/contest, local dance groups, bands or pig races. There are several carnival rides and some food vendors (a somewhat small selection in my opinion).  There are vendors, either for merchandise or information, some have the typical spin wheel games for candy. They also have a petting zoo with your standard animals like goats, sheet, lamas, cows; they had a fox to look at and bunnies to pet. This year kids could take a pony ride for $5.  The weather was not great and crowds were light this year, I think that impacted the food.  All the items we bought seemed to have been sitting under a heat lamp for a while. The park where the event is held has a nice playground for kids and many used it.  The car show was moved this year to an off site location.

My favorite things to see/do have been the dog contest and the petting zoo, although I am sure people with older kids, or who like carnival rides themselves, would find that be an enjoyable aspect. 

My son took a trip to Tater Daze for their opening day.  They had an inflatables area for kids; there was a large slide that was free and some other options for $2.  They advertised Touch-A-Truck, but there was only one fire truck on opening day (Friday). He wasn’t able to sit up front, but could walk around in the back area where crew would be.  He enjoyed the petting zoo. I am not sure we would make a trip in the future if we were busy, but it was good activity when there was nothing else to do on Friday night.

On Sunday, for Father’s Day we went to Stone Arch Bridge Festival.  It is always a fun festival; it has a good mix of art vendors, with food vendors and some music.  They also have “other booths”.  I like to stop at the lottery booth, you can spin the wheel to win prizes, and many of the prizes are lottery tickets.  All three adults in our group won tickets, and one was a $3 winner. They also have a few booths in a row that give out packaged food samples, which we call adult trick or treating. In the park area, there are stages for entertainment, some fun activities and normally a few more samples.  They also have a small car show, which my dad has always enjoyed. It is a event we will continue to attend. 

I love seeing other people’s dogs and so does my son, so I am almost always up for an event tailored to dogs.  The Pet Expo had the added benefit of being tailored to all pets, and I thought it would have more things tailored to my cat-loving self.  I encouraged another family to join us.  My friend asked me if it was just going to be browsing pet products – “I don’t think so”, I said. While browsing booths is always part of events like these, I told her I was going for the pet shows, kid’s zone and free stuff.

I was wrong; it was almost all browsing booths. While it was at the Convention Center, it was not all the large.  We were there for the talent contest, sadly the entries were sparse and the tricks were few.  Not much they could do about it since the entries came people who were there at the time. The stage was small and people stood all around, most of the dogs were afraid of the crowd.   We were also there during a rescue dog parade – which was just calling dogs up on the stage, it was also not the best “show”.

I was embarrassed about the kid’s zone.  My friend has a son that is older than mine.  He wanted to do something “fun” and I told him about the kids zone that we would end with.  I hadn’t been to the kid’s zone when I was telling him about it, but when we made our way to that “area”, it wasn’t an area with kids activities or anything free for them to do. One booth was set up and they did spray tattoos. They were more expensive than we wanted to spend.

The free stuff was not all the abundant either; in fact it was the least amount of samples I have gotten at any pet tailored event I have been to, bigger or smaller. Stone Mountain had some sample bags of food (and some for cats); we got some probiotics, and poop bags. A few booths had wheels the kids could spin – or plinko style games.  We got a couple pieces of candy and an unblow-up balloon. We did buy some pet treats that were cute.

They did have lizards, parrots, and cats that you could look at too.  While I sound down on the event, it was fine place to kill some time, I just wouldn’t have invited others with me if I knew what it was like.  For people not trying to entertain dog loving toddlers or if you didn’t have a dog you wanted to enter in the contest, it probably isn’t the most fun.  The Convention Center did have a craft bar, we stopped there to entertain our husbands.  The kids ran around the vacant couch areas playing with their balloons.

On the way home I convinced my husband to take a “short detour” to Chalkfest.  I knew he would like it, and he did.  The area was very small; we walked the whole section and went to the bathroom in 30 minutes.  We came at the end of the first day, not many designs were complete yet, which is too bad because it stormed the next day.  It was fun to see the talent of the artists.  I would recommend going next year if you are in the area.  It was an interesting stop.

We started the weekend off with a visit to the Edina Art Fair. It is a popular annual art fair with several vendor booths and options for food. A couple of the nearby restaurants had outdoor parties where you could buy beer and listen to music, there were also beer tents. A couple people in our booth bought art – metal work and a screen print. We all bought treats. As a nice surprise, a local jeweler was offering free ring cleaning. It was a fine place to kill time, but other options probably would have been more fun.

We made the trip over to Hopkins from Edina for the LDT Brewing Co Anniversary Party. None of us had ever been there. It was free to get in, but you needed to buy tickets for drinks. Several people in my group tried beers they really enjoyed. My husband was a big fan of the coffee stout; another in our group had a sour she enjoyed. We live a long way from Hopkins, but my husband wants to make the trip back just for a coffee stout. They had kids activities that kept our toddler entertained. While we were there just short of an hour, it was worth the trip.

We also made it to the rescheduled Touch-A-Truck event in Maplewood. It was great. Lots of different trucks, some had very long lines, but our son didn’t have a big preference so we avoided those. Kids could crawl around in the trucks, honk the horns, push buttons and almost every kid looked very happy to be there. We arrived an hour and a half after the event started; the fire truck was no longer there. I heard it had a very long line when it was there. We spent 45 minutes there, but I know some families had been there over an hour.