SPOKANE, Wash. — In 10 days, hundreds of thousands of people have gotten on rides, purchased food and played carnival games at the Spokane County Interstate Fair.
“The fair is fun, the rides are awesome,” attendee Ricky Williams said.
Fair director Erin Gurtel said it’s been exciting to see the fair come back to almost pre-pandemic attendance.
“We had a feeling it was going to be a great fair this year, but the community has really turned out and it’s exceeded our expectations,” Gurtel shared.
Gurtel said in 2019, the fair saw over 200,000 attendees.
She said this year, attendance numbers are expected to make an almost-full return.
“We’re tracking, I think, we’re going to get almost to that number, which we’re really excited about,” Gurtel said.
Gurtel said the pandemic changed how the fair looked over the last two years. To keep the spirit of the fair alive, organizers adopted a fair food drive-thru in 2020. Then in 2021, the fair came back, but masks were required under the state mandate.
Gurtel said attendance was down near 50% in those years when compared to 2019 numbers.
This year, the fair came back with no mask guidelines. With more people at the fair, vendors are selling more food.
Gary Wood at Moonshriners Elephant Ears said the fry team has been working hard to meet demand since the start of the fair.
“Compared to years past, we’re doing pretty well," Wood said. "Without the fair the last few years, this has been a real big boost to us.”
Wood said Moonshriners has fried dough and sprinkled cinnamon sugar more than a few times over the last 10 days.
"Roughly about 19,000,” Wood said.
The Spokane end-of-summer favorite also celebrates record carnival and beer garden sales and its first sold-out show since 2009 this year.
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