Art City Days: Carnival

Ah, the Carnival. Creaky rides held together by duct tape. Carnies that smell strongly like smoke or are missing body parts. Children scavenging for extra tickets in the garbage or on the ground. Cotton candy and caramel apples that sit in the window of the food booths and tempt all to buy the overpriced confections. Ah, the Carnival.

Some people don't like going to the Carnival because of the possibly fearsome carnies or the potential that your life is endangered every time you step onto a beat up old ride. But that's one of the many reasons I love going! When I was little, we'd have tickets instead of the newfangled wristbands of nowadays. We'd have to carefully plan out our tickets on what we really wanted to ride, like the Orbiter, Spin Out, the Graviton (Actually called the StarShip 2000), the Ring of Fire, the Gee Whizz, the Zipper, or other smaller things like the giant yellow slide or the Indiana Jones Adventure, which is basically a giant jungle gym. When we ran out of tickets, it was always depressing because we would watch all the other kids with loads of tickets just ride and ride and ride.



When I went to the Carnival this year, I rode most of the rides but I discovered that the only rides I really like are the Zipper, the giant yellow slide, and the Gee Whizz. All the other rides just made me sick on the ride or for hours after the ride. Even the Orbiter, which was my previous favorite.
If you don't know what the Zipper is, it's a large contraption lined with cages that moves around. The cages also move around a track around the large contraption, and then the cages themselves flip around. It's excellent and possibly nauseating. But I love it.




The Zipper





My most favorite (and the best) part of the Carnival are the food booths set up by locals. There's the famous Kiwanis scone booth, where if you've never had a scone in your life from there, you're not a true Springville-ite. There was a Peruvian booth, K'Rico's BBQ grill, Texas Twister, Caribbean food booth, kettle corn, italian ice and gelati, Domino's, Navajo Tacos, Drizzled Delights, and more. Every year I try to try different kinds of foods and drinks. I always get a scone and a Texas Twister, but this year I tried Jamaican ratties (potatoes) and honey BBQ chicken at the Caribbean booth, a chicken kabob from the Peruvian booth, and chocolate-drizzled strawberries from the Drizzle Delights. I also tried a Soca drink at the Caribbean place, which was a mango, passionfruit, banana, pineapple, etc. drink of Jamaica. It was fabulous.
I highly recommend trying the different food booths- there's always something delicious waiting there.




The Texas Twister is a blend of freshly squeezed lemons, oranges, and limes put into a secret drink mix and topped with a cherry.








Drizzled Delights. You could also get cheesecake drizzled in chocolate, which to me sounds awful.