Yolo County Fairgrounds — Local services in Woodland

They Woodland Celtic games and Festival held on Saturday and Sunday April 27th and 28th 2019, on the Woodland County Fairgrounds in Woodland, California, was an awesome experience. I grew up in Woodland, and the old fairgrounds is a great place for gatherings of many different sorts, from the well known and loved County Fairs, to the popular Celtic games. The fairgrounds accommodate many people, but even so bathroom accommodations always seem to be in short supply. In these later years more bathrooms have been added and that situation has seemed somewhat better. It seems you don't have to walk as far to get to a restroom as previously and this is important when you have to walk so far to different venus. Handicap parking is also accessible for handicapped patrons. Pets of all sorts are prohibited on the county fairgrounds. Even so I saw many persons with their pets. None of the animals that I saw were service animals. Indeed, at one point one dog was wandering around and a small group of people were about to take the dog and turn it in, until finally the owner came up and got the animal--the animal was not even on a leash. Also out in the parking lot I heard one dog barking furiously and back of a camper with no sight of the owner. It bothers me that not all pet owners have been responsible at these games. My adult son, who came to the games with me, and I boarded our dogs at a responsible kennels for the weekend knowing they would receive good care. The vendors, were in wide supply and array. I bought silver jewelry for gifts, buying a few choice items for myself, I bought food for myself and my family, my daughter and I had our hair braided in the Celtic designs, we watched Highland dancing, we saw sword fights, parades, and all manner of vikings in authentic garb, Romans, highlanders in kilts, Irish Clans and all manner of Celtic peoples in varieties of dress. Other vendors had beautiful stonework, carvings, and various manner of Irish logos, there were silk scarves and crocheted and beautiful hats and tartans for people to buy. There were dishes and bowls and all kinds of varieties of memorabilia. Also they had ancestry research available and information for people, you could look into ancestry and DNA information for people looking to research their history in their routes into their families. They had a hawk display with beautiful hawks and demonstrations about how they hunted and used hawks for hunting this was an awesome display and I enjoyed this one to immensely. Also there were many competitions too many to mention, really. The competitions included such things as archery, drum competition, band competition, poll, and throwing things I can't even pronounce. They even had historical lectures and, should you like, church services on Sunday. Also, they had several different bands that played that were very very good. My favorite was "The Ploughboys." The "Ceilidh" Dinner was $22 cooked by Father Paddy's. It was overrated and the shepherd's pie was terrible. Everyone around me didn't like their shepherd's pie either. We had salad which was good, the bread was good but the vegetables were squash which was ick and chicken thighs in a mushroom sauce (they used slotted spoons to dish it up, so when it was dished up, we didn't even get any of the watery sauce--it was just ok). I think for $22 we should have gotten better food. Thumbs down on the dinner. I paid $66 for 3 people to eat this, how disappointing. All in all the fairground experience was awesome with the one exception of the dinner. Go again next year....

Definitely not the same as it historically been. In fact, we found it quite boring. Even the exhibit halls lacked the lure and appeal of days of yore. The foods we tried wet mostly decent, however, pricing is through the roof—so, either eat before you go, wait to eat until you get home, or make sure you’ve got deep pockets if you want to eat those favorite yummy, sweet and or greasy deep fried fair food staples. As for the reds, they have basucally the same rides as always, with some of them having been remanded. I did not notice a SkyDiver, Flying Bobs, or Scrambler. I don’t recall seeing the giant slide, either. That’s not to say these weren’t there…I just didn’t notice them. Corn dogs will cost you $9-$12 each, demeonding on whether you’re buying the regular sized ones or the jumbos. Big bag of Cotten candy =$12 2 Hotdogs for $20 Simple Charicature drawings start at $18 for a small basuc one.

Go check it out… Im sure you’ll find at least one thing...

Apparently the Fairgrounds imposes a "no in-out" parking policy which means that you have to pay a parking fee every time that you come in on the same day! This is awful for a dog show! If you show early in the morning and want to leave for lunch or to visit the area before coming back for the groups in the late afternoon then you have to pay for parking again! One poor lady left after showing and realized that she left her purse in the building and they made her pay again just to come back in to retrieve it!

One building has restrooms outside with an uncovered ramp to get inside it so you get soaking wet when it rains (and it was pouring rain during my visit).

Another building had doors that banged into each other so loudly that it sounded like firework explosions going off. The sound terrified my dog so badly that he was trembling for about 10 minutes each time he heard it.

I won't participate in another dog show...