By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Ellis County Fair will kick off with seven nights of main event action tonight with RPM Speedway races.
The fair will feature RPM races tonight and Sunday, KPRA rodeo Tuesday and Wednesday nights, a new ranch rodeo Thursday night and a thrill show, including monster trucks, Friday and July 17. All main events start a 7 p.m. with the exception of the two nights of thrill show, which start at 8 p.m.
Instead of just monster trucks on the second weekend of the fair, the thrill show also will include transformers, motorcycle stunt riders and the Globe of Death, which is a spherical motorcycle stunt cage.
Advance tickets for all events are $20 per individual. Gate tickets are $10 for a single night. Children ages 5 and younger are admitted free.
Tickets can be purchased at Casey's, Cerv's, the Hays Convention & Visitors Bureau and Walmart in Hays. They can also be purchased at the Casey's stores in Ellis and La Crosse, Short Stop in Plainville and Total Convenience in Victoria.
You can see a complete schedule by clicking here.
The theme for this year's fair is "It's a Jungle Out There."
Free music will be offered on the Midway from Tuesday through Saturday. Adam Capps Band will play Tuesday, Sam Cox on Wednesday, DOC on Thursday, Paramount on Friday and Sunset Sinners on Saturday.
The inflatable carnival and laser tag are back this year. Wristbands will cost $5. The fair has added a NASCAR simulator in the Unrein Building and a mechanical bull on the midway near the beer garden.
Commercial booths will be back in the Unrein Building and 4-H and open class exhibits will be in the Schenk Building. The Schenck Building will be open to the public starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday. It will continue to be open daily 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through July 17.
This is a change as exhibits used to be picked up on Saturday morning. They will now be picked up on Sunday morning.
"Everybody is ready to get back to the way we have done it in the past," said Jill Pfannenstiel, fair board president. "The fair is just a really great week for 4-H kids to bond with each other and bond with their families.
"They have worked hard on their animals and projects, so now it's their time to see how it went and get judged on their exhibits," she said.
Susan Schlichting, county extension agent for 4-H youth, said the fair has received more entries than last year, but entries have not quite rebounded to pre-pandemic numbers.
"Things are picking up definitely," she said. "People had all this time on their hands, so they put it to good use."
Although hand sanitizer will be offered and volunteers will regularly clean fair areas, many of the intense COVID precautions observed last year will be gone, she said. Youth will no longer have to social distance from judges, and masks will not be required.
The fair has chosen not to bring back the food challenge or the barbecue quite yet because of lingering health concerns, Schlichting said.
The fair will have a special class for aprons this year. In foods, the special class is dips, which can be entered on Tuesday morning. Barn quilts is another special class, which has carried over from previous years.
Every year photography has a special category. This year the special category is sunflowers. Next year the special category will be rainbows.
Other special events include:
• Kids workshop sponsored by the Ellis County Drug Enforcement at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in Deustchfest Hall
• Farm Bureau Kids Scavenger Hunt at 10 a.m. Thursday in the Schenk Building.
• The Amazing Race at the Ellis County Fair at 10 a.m. Thursday
• Lego Bricks contest at 2 p.m. Thursday at Deustchfest Hall
• Free root beer floats at 5 p.m. Thursday at the show arena
The annual 4-H livestock auction will be at 6 p.m. July 17.