Ottawa County Fairgrounds

I took my grandson to the fair, we had a great time on the rides, but I'm getting to old for the rides and going pay for it tomorrow. My grandson who's 11 wanted to play the basketball game, one Ball for $5 or three for $10. We went with the three balls, the guy running the game let my grandson stand about three feet closer to the basket thinking he's a kid. Well after sinking the first one, second one and the third one he will think twice before letting kids stand closer. Lol. We had carnival food and then went to the bandstand to watch the Monster trucks. We had a great time!

Nice Fairgrounds campground. Stayed for 2 nights. Nice and quite. Electric and water available. Great price and close to area attractions. Big Rig friendly.

This place has a ton of potential, just needs a bit of TLC. The sites were not easy to locate, and figuring out boundaries was next to impossible in the wooded area. Some of the sites closer to the entrance were easier to discern. Electric and water can be some distance away from many sites, So bring really long cords and hoses. It wasn't busy this weekend, so we were able to move to a site closer to them. There were no picnic tables or fire pits on sites, we saw picnic tables piled up off to the side though. The people running the campground just got here in the last week or so, and are super nice. Looks like they are playing catch-up around the park. My best guess is this place will improve under the new caretakers in time. We'll come back.

I can only rate this by the Holland Celtic Festival that I attended for the first time and loved! What I can say about the fairgrounds is that the bathrooms were clean, the grandstands were comfortable, and easy to see events from any seat, and they have sufficient parking. They certainly had enough space to house the Festival. The Celtic Festival was a ton of fun. There were beautiful souvenirs, a lot of handcrafted items. I thought the food and souvenirs were reasonably priced, which was a nice surprise. The music was phenomenal, with plenty of tables and seating to accommodate a large crowd. The Highland games were very cool, I only wish they had gone on longer. My only complaint with the Festival was the Guinness experience I paid extra money to attend. The photos advertising it made it seem like it would be in an intimate setting indoors. The reality was that we were in an open barn type structure which was really stifling, and we could not hear, which made the whole experience rather pointless.

I have fond memories of the Amateur Radio Field Day exercises here and working the radios through the night while operators took shifts of sleeping and TXing. This served as a nationwide exercise for how communications would be done if the phone and / or internet networks failed due to a local or global disaster (fortunately we haven't had that kind of emergency locally for us since the early 2000s). I hope the opportunity would be able again in the future. The fields were great for setting up the large antenna arrays.

We also enjoy the opportunity to see and participate in the Ottawa County Fair, and hope to see Geocaching as a part of the year round activities on the property again (some of our earliest finds were hosted here). God bless and thanks again for the great memories and hopefully many more to come.