K-Days

This may be a week belated but here's what I did last Sunday -- at K-Days! K-Days, or Klondike Days, is a ten-day summer fair held each July at Northlands Park in Edmonton. It dates back to 1879 and formerly had a Klondike gold rush theme. It seems that over the years enthusiasm for the theme has waned -- we saw just one group of (awesome) people in period costumes. Nonetheless, K-Days turned out to be lot of fun (even if you're like me and can't go near any ride with nonlinear acceleration...which is basically all of them).

It didn't take much encouragement from our colleagues (and no they don't have kids) to convince me and a resident friend that we needed to check out K-Days, if not just to see what it's all about. We parked on a residential street a couple blocks south of Northlands and paid our $16 admission to enter the park.

The place was packed (apparently 785,000 people attended over the 10 days!). It felt like a very large-scale PNE, with a lot of the same rides but significantly more midway games and food stands. We walked around, having a look at the rides and watching people lose at deceptively simple midway games.

a pony carousel!

in keeping with the Klondike theme: gold panning

We headed inside the massive exhibition building to check out the Superdog show, which was way more entertaining than I'd expected, with dogs of all shapes and sizes leaping over jumps, "dancing" to Footloose, and sniffing out hidden objects to the Pink Panther theme.

sorry, my cell phone just couldn't take a good photo here ...there's a Superdog there somewhere

The next hall over featured a random assortment of things. There was a zipline and giant inflatable slide for kids, paintball and an escape room (at extra cost), zorb balls, a glacier tour bus, and a couple of Mercedes on display. We also had a look in some reptile tanks and held a tarantula! Here's just my hand:

#anonymousbloggingprobs

and for some reason there was a (sleepy) kangaroo

We watched a trampolining show, which went from pretty cool to super duper cool when halfway through the trampolinists began propelling themselves up the wall behind the trampolines. They did all of these seemingly effortless stunts up there and were so theatrical the whole time. It was great.

Our friends had recommended the sheep shearing demonstration and at 3:30 pm we followed the farm smells to the livestock hall just in time to see the sheep farmer entering the sheep pen. As it was the final day of the fair, nearly all of the sheep had been shorn. There was one particularly large and shaggy sheep that the farmer led over to the ring in the centre of the hall. We sat on the bleachers and watched as the sheep put up a fight for a full five seconds, then resigned to getting a hair cut and chilled right out. The farmer was so efficient, starting by shaving its underbelly as the sheep lay on its back, and then maneuvering the sheep around to shave its flanks and back. The thick wool came off in a big sheet and the sheep was left looking so little! Ha the things that city folk find entertaining :)

just minding his own

...then

getting the belly

fini

10 lb of wool

We walked around in the animal hall, taking a look at the pigs, alpacas, chickens, goats, and cows, and petting the horses.

sleepy pigs

alpacas

so much cuteness

sleepy cows

tried our hand at milking

one of the Stampede horses

A third exhibition hall housed a sort of marketplace, with hundreds of stalls selling everything from candy apples to massaging beds, and a final hall was set up with a food court and activities for kids. Neither of these was too interesting so we headed back outdoors to look for some unique fair food. Though giant corn dogs, deep-fried Oreos, and spiralled potatoes looked all kinds of greasy delicious, we decided that the grilled cheese donut was the thing to beat. $10 later, we split what looked a little too much like a regular grilled cheese sandwich; it turned out to be pretty tasty, like grilled cheese on sweet bread, and even had some pulled pork in it.

Runner up for most unique fair food were mini doughnut popsicles ($5 apiece), which were also surprisingly tasty.

Three and a half hours and a brief torrential downpour later we were K-Days'ed out...but had enjoyed the afternoon, rides and games notwithstanding. Would I go again? Maybe. I think Edmonton has other more interesting summer festivals, but K-Days is fun to experience at least once!