Crystal City

Crystal City: the original home of the Zingo. (Which now sadly sits disassembled somewhere in storage after Bell's amusement park was closed in 2006 or 7.)   Crystal City, as you can partially see is now a strip mall down Southwest Boulevard.
    As we pulled up, we could tell the parking lot was packed. People were still walking up.  Today was the last day of the Crystal City Carnival.  I enjoy community events.  I don't get to go to many.  But when I do, it makes me feel like a part of a real community.  Almost Gilmore Girls-esque.  (Which is great, because it's one of my favorite shows!)  Walking up, we could smell some of the wonderful smells of the fair.  September can't come soon enough!  I'm ready for the real thing now. (Except it canwait, because I need me some Summer weather so I can go to the lake and do summery things.)

There was, of course, the classic fair and carnival ride ferris wheel.  There were a few other rides as well, most of them kids rides.  Actually, I'm not a huge ride fan at the fair anymore, except for a few tried and true that I ride every year.  A. They're expensive; B. Some of them look scary, do they seriously put them up safely in just a couple of days?? C. I've started getting sick on roundy round rides.  (Except the Himalaya.  That's a fun bone-crushing ride.  Though I miss how it used to go backwards and forwards.  I can't stop laughing the whole time we're on it!!)  The other ride that I have to ride is the one that has about 5 arms coming down in a circle and each arm has a bench at the end of it that holds about 6 or so people.  The arms that these benches come down from swings back and forth while the whole thing spins.  I love it every time!  It takes my breath away, probably cause I'm so scared that the whole arm is just going to swing right off!  But hey, that's part of the fun, right?

There were also little carnival games set up.  I've never been big on playing them.  I never win. All of the money that I bring to the fair (or carnival) with me is for food and those two rides. But people look like they enjoy them.  (It reminds me of that scene in Despicable Me where the villain takes his little children to the carnival and they really want to win the unicorn prize from a booth and, after many failed attempts at winning the rigged game, he ends up blasting the whole booth with his gun.)
    But now we get to the real reason (one of them aside from wanting to be involved in the community) why I wanted to go to the carnival.  The Food!!  I'd like to joke that I'm a fat person trapped in a skinny girl's body.  The way I eat (though I have gotten a lot better and have cut out fried food for a little while) I sould weigh a lot more than I do.  As we stood in line at the hot dog place, I started looking at the prices.  Wait a second, it can't be $6 for a corn dog!  Surely these prices are double??  But no, Hubby informed me that that was the "normal" fair price.  I guess I'd just never noticed...  We decided to forego the corn dogs and go straight to the good stuff: cotton candy and caramel apples!! ("Would the pretty lady like a carmel apple?  Free for the pretty lady!" name that movie!!)  They were delicious!  They were worth the $9 it took to get them both.  It's always OK to splurge on dessert.
    All in all it was a good visit to the carnival.  There were a lot of people that looked like they were enjoying themselves.  We enjoyed ourselves as well!  I believe this was the carnival's 3rd year running and this was the first year we could make it.  I'm sure glad we did!