This year’s pared-down version of a summer carnival at the Clark County Fairgrounds may not have featured any prizewinning livestock, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any animals to be found on the premises.
There were the stuffed animals, ready to be won by skilled carnival game players. Or, if you’re as lucky as 10-year-old Addyson, you could also win a live fish.
She tossed a ping-pong ball into the right container, she said, earning herself a yet-to-be-named miniature goldfish. Addyson will wait to find out if it’s a boy fish or a girl fish before picking a name, she explained.
“I’ll have to show it to my dad,” Addyson said. “He’s a fish expert.”
She visited the carnival on its opening day, along with her grandmother, sister and cousins. The Vancouver family was one of many who explored the Clark County Event Center’s Family Fun Series Carnival on Saturday, enjoying the games, rides and food on offer.
Her grandmother, Deb (who asked that the family’s last name remain omitted), said she did miss the trappings of the traditional Clark County Fair, which in a typical year would draw nearly a quarter of a million visitors over its 10-day run. But this version — kept more low-key by organizers in an attempt to avoid spreading COVID-19 and its highly contagious variants — was certainly preferable to no fair at all.
“There’s no animals, no farm things, no exhibits. That’s what I come for,” Deb said. But the grandkids, she added, were having a ball on the rides.
“This one’s Granny’s choice,” she said, cocking her thumb at one of the carnival’s three Ferris wheels.
Even on opening day, the crowd at the fairgrounds was relatively sparse, with hardly any of the 32 rides attracting enough riders to form long lines. The weather was mild, with lower-than-usual temps in the mid-70s and an occasional drizzle.
Alan Cox and his sons, 13-year-old Ethan and 10-year-old Jason, made the trek down from Rainier, Ore., looking for a fun activity to fill a summer day,
“To get the kids out and have some fun,” Alan Cox said.
Both boys agreed that their favorite ride was “Area 51” — a spinning circular room that uses centrifugal force to press riders to the wall, then drops the floor out.
“It feels so weird,” Ethan exclaimed.
The event is being put on by Butler Amusements, a California-based company that supplies rides, food and games to local fairs along the West Coast.
‘It’s got the spirit’
This isn’t technically the Clark County Fair, Event Center Marketing Director Tawnia Linde clarified. In May, the Clark County Fair Board announced that it was canceling the traditional 2021 fair due to “the recent trend of increasing infection rates, the continuing safety concerns for volunteers, staff, and community partners.”
But Butler Amusements would usually put on the carnival side of the Clark County Fair, and the cancellation left the company with a gap in its schedule, Linde said. So organizers decided to go forward with that portion alone.
“We strive to provide a venue where people can come together and enjoy the fair in all the aspects that they associate with the fair, which historically results in large crowds in relatively small spaces such as our midways, the grandstands, carnival area and food court,” John Morrison, fair manager and CEO, said at the time.
Since its inception in the 1800s, the Clark County Fair has been outright canceled only twice: once in 1942 due to World War II, and again in 2020 during the first summer of the pandemic.
“I’ve come just about every year since I was born,” said 19-year-old Dakota Beaudoin, who on Saturday disembarked the stomach-dropping “Rock Star” ride with three friends, all Clark County locals.
“Obviously, it’s smaller because of COVID,” Beaudoin said. “But I think it’s got the spirit.”
