North Carolina Chronicles, Chapter 2: The State Fair
It's fun...as long as you can ignore how long it took you to get there.
I’ve lived near state fairs for almost as long as I can remember.
The North Dakota State Fair is held each July in Minot. That’s about an hour’s drive from my grandparents’ old house in Parshall, so whenever we were up to visit them during the summer, we’d make the trek over.
In Sioux Falls at the beginning of every August is the Sioux Empire Fair. This is not the South Dakota State Fair, which is held in late September in Huron (about two hours away), but it gets more attendance than the State Fair every year, so it’s basically the de facto State Fair.
Of course, the Minnesota State Fair is held during the two weeks leading up to Labor Day in Falcon Heights, a suburb just north of the midway point between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. That’s the biggest state fair in the United States by average daily attendance, and I have many fond memories there,1 so it was going to be hard to follow up no matter what.
Tasked with doing exactly that was the North Carolina State Fair, held in Raleigh for a week and a half in mid-October.
Ideally, this piece would be about my favorite parts of the North Carolina State Fair, my most treasured memories, and perhaps my favorite fair foods. But, if I’m being completely honest, most of the specifics escape my brain because every single time I went to the State Fair, I couldn’t get over how brutally long it took just to reach the parking lot.
I’m definitely not the only North Carolinian with this experience. Look at a map of North Carolina.
Raleigh is east of almost every major population center in the state while also being on the eastern edge of its own metro area. This means that almost all State Fair traffic, local and otherwise, comes from the west. Whether you’re coming from just across the Triangle in Chapel Hill or from all the way out in Asheville,2 you’re stuck heading east on either the I-40 bottleneck or one of the spurring surface streets full of people trying and failing to escape the traffic.
Let’s zoom in on the Triangle.
The State Fair is held in a sort of no man’s land between three freeways: I-40 to the west, I-440 to the east, and Wade Avenue to the north. This has the effect of both encouraging more automobile traffic and discouraging traffic of any other type.
Nobody wants to walk or bike to the Fairgrounds both because the infrastructure isn’t there to support it and because the roads are already full of cars. Transit is basically a non-starter everywhere in the Triangle—even in the current post-pandemic transition period, when it’s been fare-free for a while—but it’s even worse in this scenario because there’s no system in place to give it priority over cars. Buses just get stuck in the same traffic that cars do, and there’s no rail service that stops anywhere near the Fairgrounds.
And remember, the State Fair goes on for a week and a half: 11 days. Most of the adverse traffic effects occur on the two Thursday-Sunday weekends that bookend this period, but it’s still pretty bad during the interim week. For way too much of the brief time period with the best weather and scenery of the year, the whole metro area becomes a gridlocked mess.
The Fairgrounds are probably in a bad spot, but they’ve been there since 1928 and they’re not leaving anytime soon. Non-automotive transportation is definitely under-supported in North Carolina, but that’s not changing anytime soon either. What can you do?
They say comparison is the thief of joy, but I-40 already stole all my joy, so I can’t help but compare this experience to how it works in Minnesota. Traffic is still pretty bad in the Twin Cities during State Fair time—and, at two full weeks, Minnesota’s fair is even longer than North Carolina’s—but given Falcon Heights’ central location in the Twin Cities, and the Twin Cities’ relatively central location in Minnesota, it’s significantly more metered. You don’t have an overabundance of fairgoers coming from one direction. The Fairgrounds are also surrounded by a grid of surface streets, so the traffic isn’t just clogging a couple freeways.
And if you don’t want to sit in the traffic, you don’t have to. A reliable Bus Rapid Transit line goes right to the Fairgrounds and this line is easily accessible by both of Metro Transit’s light rail lines. You could even walk or bike there if you really wanted; the streets are built to handle it.
Enough of that, though. This series isn’t Minnesota Chronicles. The North Carolina State Fair isn’t gonna get any easier to reach in the near future and that’s that. But that’s a bit too much of a downer to end on, so let me contradict myself and tell you about my favorite memory from the fair itself.
You can usually find a few very loud carnies called Guessers sprinkled on the paths throughout the Fairgrounds. These Guessers charge folks a couple bucks to play their game: Fool the Guesser, which I guess isn’t so much a game as it is a wacky, sociological slot machine. You tell the Guesser whether you want them to guess your age or your weight. If they’re within two years or 20 pounds on either side, they win; if they’re not, you win a prize.
This is a purposely wide range, which makes it super easy for someone who does this every day for a week and a half to hit at a really high rate, but Leah and I still found ourselves intrigued when we visited the fair in 2021. Not in the prizes, mind you—they were clearly cheapo midway rejects—but in the guessing itself.
I’ve always been curious about how old people think I look. When I was growing up, everyone thought I was younger than I actually am, but in 2018 I finally gained the ability to grow a full beard, and since then, people tend to overshoot my age.
Leah went first. She was 26 at the time and the Guesser had her at 24. A win for him, just barely.
Then I stepped up, beard and all, about a month short of my own 24th birthday. The Guesser started cracking jokes to try to get a reaction out of me.
He first called me a cradle robber, implying that he thought I was older than Leah. Given that 25 was within the margin of error, he could guess that I was a year older than he thought Leah was and still win, but Leah went first, so he already knew she was 26. Interesting.
Then he asked to look at my hands. He called them “old dad hands”. I chuckled in confusion. My hands aren’t particularly battered or wrinkled. In fact, they’re two of the only areas of my skin that aren’t covered in hair, making them perhaps my youngest-looking body parts. How old did this dude think I was?
28. He guessed 28.
It took my brain a second to process how wrong he was. I don’t turn 28 until November 2025. He could have doubled the margin for error and still missed.
I tripped over my words while telling him that I was in fact 23. Hearing this made him just as surprised as I was. I offered to show him my ID in case he thought I was lying, but he declined and let me take a prize.
I earned it, I guess.
And, when it comes down to it, that’s what the State Fair’s all about. In 25 more years, I won’t remember how bad the traffic was on I-40, but I’ll probably still remember successfully fooling the Guesser. Enjoying the best parts of the fair with loved ones is 100% worth suffering through the trip there.
(But boy am I glad I’ve moved back to a state where the trip there doesn’t require suffering.)
North Carolina Chronicles
Chapter 1: The Cop
Chapter 2: The State Fair
Chapter 3: Job #1
Chapter 4: Fast Food
Chapter 5: Job #2
And hope to make many more now that I’m back
I have no earthly idea why you’d drive from Asheville to Raleigh during peak fall colors, but let’s assume you are.