Newton KOA

On our way out west, we discovered that we would catch the end of the Iowa State Fair. We decided to shift some of our days around and planned a one day stay at Newton KOA which is east of Des Moines Iowa.

Newton KOA

The KOA, like most was right of the highway but was an extremely well taken care of KOA. The night we arrived the KOA held an ice cream social. Who can say no to ice cream? They even had a yellow Smart Car KOA with personalized plates.

Newton KOA smart car

Iowa State Fair

Early the next morning we head out to Des Moines for the Iowa State Fair. This was Leeann and David’s first experience at a State Fair.

The children were looking forward to rides but even as we entered the fair grounds their attention turned to the animals. Right at the beginning was a display with rabbits and chickens and the kids kept asking if we could take one home.  They were curious about the judging of the animals. Once we moved on everyone’s attention turned to food but that was interrupted by the broadcast opening the fair and the singing of the National Anthum. After singing along we headed into the agricultural building we learned about the type of farms that were in Iowa. Here we saw all forms of judged produce and flowers, bee keeping to Christmas tree farms. We also saw the butter cow but it was Iowa; and they had The Star Trek, USS Enterprise carved out of butter! Why you ask? Iowa is the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.

USS Enterprise NCC-1701 made from butter.

As we walked to the animal barns we “ran” into the largest pumpkin.

The biggest pumpkin at the 2016 Iowa State Fair

As we continued to the barns with the cows, sheep, pigs and Leeann’s favorite, horses. The kids loved seeing all the animals and we stopped to watch a judging of sheep. By the time we got done walking the barns it was lunch time and after lunch we let the kids ride some rides. We did call it a day come early evening because the next day was a travel day to Nebraska.