It’s the time of year all New Englanders wait for: The Big E! It’s an agricultural fair that started over 100 years ago and features individual state houses for each of the New England states, plus food, rides, games—basically your state fair to the extreme.

Josh and I went for the first time together last year and planned to go again this year. It’s easier to go during the week instead of the weekend, so Josh already has Thursdays off and I took the day off from work.

Traffic to The Big E can be insane, even though I live about a half hour away from the fair. We left around 1:00 p.m., took the backroads, and didn’t hit any traffic until we got close to the main avenue the fair is on. We ended up parking in a side lot by the town hall; the closer you get to the fair, you can actually park on people’s front lawns for like $40. We had a less than five minute walk from where we parked, which we were fine with.

The night before, we came up with a game plan of the food we wanted to get. I wanted to try different types this year instead of getting the same things I usually do at The Big E. For the most part, Josh and I would split the food, unless there was something really specific we wanted to try.

This is one of the things I was looking forward to the most: pumpkin beer and Thanksgiving nachos from the New England Craft Beer Pub. The nachos are new to the fair this year, and they were on our must-do food list. They’re made with fried chips, stuffing, chunks of turkey, cheese, and cranberry sauce for dipping.

I’d give them a 10/10—sooooo good.

Our next stop was the Avenue of States, which has a building dedicated to each of the six New England states, full of vendors, food, and drinks from each state. Josh got Dell’s Lemonade in the Rhode Island house and a beer from the Connecticut house, and I got a cider donut in the Massachusetts house. It’s fun to walk through each of the houses and see the different vendors.

After we went through all of the state houses, I got a beer and we headed to the New England Center for an eclair. The building is used for craft competitions but also has the main bakery stand for eclairs and cream puffs.

Our next stops were the Better Living Center (where you can get all of those products featured in infomercials), the Young Building (also full of infomercial products), Farm-a-Rama, and the Mallary Complex (where a lot of the show/competition animals are kept). 

This was pretty much the highlight of the day: we got to pet dogs! I hadn’t seen the dogs in Farm-a-Rama since 2016, and I was so surprised when we turned the corner and there were so many doggos waiting to be petted. There were goldens and labs from local organizations, and Josh was determined to pet every single dog—which he did.

We were ready for more food, so we walked back across the grounds to Angela’s Pizza for a slice of dill pickle pizza and a giant mozzarella stick. This was the only time we had to wait in line; it took about 15 minutes but the line moved pretty quickly.

We watched some of the parade that goes around at 6:00 p.m., and Josh caught me two strands of beads from the floats. After I got a beer, we headed to the Coliseum to watch the horse shows.

We had randomly stumbled upon the horse shows last year, and Josh wanted to go back again to watch them. We have no clue what’s actually going on or how the competition works, but it’s cool to see the horses. (I did find some info on The Big E’s website about the competition we watched.)

After about an hour watching the horses, we left once that particular competition was over. We headed over to the Waffleicious stand to get a stuffed waffle. On the way, we took a picture in front of the Midway sign; last year we ventured into the Midway but there were too many kids/teenagers for our liking.

Josh got a corndog before we ventured back over to the Avenue of States. We popped back into a few of them, including the Maine building where I got a postcard to frame and Josh got a coaster, both of the Portland Head lighthouse we saw in August. 

We headed out after 8:00 p.m. and easily got home to watch some of the Thursday night football game. Even though we did the same things as last year, like going to the same buildings, it was still fun to go through everything. And I’m so glad we got different food this year and spaced it out during the time we were there. 

We also walked close to 18,000 steps—we haven’t done those kinds of numbers since DC.