The following opinion piece is a community submission and doesn’t reflect the opinion of TRN Media, which encompasses SweetwaterNOW and The Radio Network. 

Well that was five days of nonstop activity.  But what a show!

“Wyoming’s Big Show” is just not a marketing name.  I spoke with folks from Cheyenne who said it’s the biggest county fair in the state.  Now I haven’t been to every county fair, but I think they’re probably right.  I think you could put the State Fair in there, too.  I’ve said it should be called the Western Wyoming State Fair……but that might ruffle some Cheyenne (or Douglas) chicken feathers.

That said, let’s just put it on the table.  Wyoming’s Big Show is not Wyoming’s cheap show.  It can drain your wallet faster than a fire engine can dump a thousand  gallons of water.  But it’s not the cost….it’s the value that we really measure.

Let me give you an example.  I can’t wrap my head around paying $15 for a grilled cheese sandwich.  But the line in front of Mean Maggie’s (that name is a piece of marketing work by itself) was long every night.  And they weren’t fast.  So obviously people saw value there.  And by the looks of the crowd size at the fair…it’s a value.

Now a lot of it is what I didn’t see.  I didn’t see litter all over the grounds.  I didn’t see overflowing garbage cans.  I didn’t see overwhelmed bathrooms.  That takes  a well oiled machine. Kandi Pendleton and the staff at the events complex put on a class act.

I talked to guy from Washington D. C. who grew up here.  He hadn’t been to the fair in twenty years.  He was…well he said something like…well, I’m not sure what he said because he never really finished a sentence.  He was simply amazed by the Big Show.

At the fair I sit at the corner of what I call Concert Boulevard and Midway Avenue. Nearly everyone at the fair comes by that corner, many more than once (I know, I see some lots of times).  It’s thousands of people having a wonderful few hours of entertainment.  Something else I don’t see.  Not one dust up, let’s see who’s the toughest, I’m going to punch you in the face event.

And I’ve got to mention the Simplot Free French Fry Friday.  That was a cool, unexpected perk.  They showed me their amazing french fry cooker.  Did you know there were 260 gallons of cooking oil in that machine?  Now I think it was cooking oil.  They just said 260 gallons of oil now that I think about it. And have you ever seen better fireworks?  Now if you were in New York or Washington. D. C. for the Fourth, that doesn’t count.  And besides, you paid more than $15 dollars.

I say all this because I’m there all five days and nights.  I tell people I work the show but it’s a great job so it doesn’t seem like work work.  I see a lot and what I saw was really good, a really good “Big Show”.  It’s one of those things that you put in the “Quality of Life” column.  See you next year….at the corner of good times and good friends. Wow…what a show!

-Al Harris