A half-century ago (this September) Peter Singer published Animal Liberation, creating the modern animal-rights movement by the utilitarian argument that if we are trying to minimize suffering, alleviating the misery of animals which serve humans gives a great return on investment. A decade ago the University of Rennes 2 held a conference to celebrate forty years of the book's publication, and bunnyhugger presented a paper there and she and I got to have a suspiciously large number of close encounters with Singer. That trip was the original use for my 'Animal Liberation 40 Years On Tour' tag.
This year they scheduled a 50th Anniversary conference, close enough to deadline that bunnyhugger would only be able to present a paper by spending all of May grinding away in the word mines. But if she did go, besides the chance to do the fun part of philosophy, and maybe picking up this homework assignment Singer gave her a decade ago, we'd also be able to go to some amusement parks we might otherwise never see.
So besides the crush of finishing the semester and doing preliminary work on her paper bunnyhugger also set to figuring out what parks we might attend. Disneyland Paris or Park Asterix were obvious candidates, but she noticed something weird and alarming about the early-June dates we'd be able to visit. The web sites that estimate what crowd sizes were like predicted that the parks would be crushed, as busy as they ever get. Why?
Blame Easter. That holiday was nearly as late as it ever happens this year, which means that the holidays tied to it --- the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost and the Day After Pentecost (Whit Monday) --- were the Sunday before and the Sunday-and-Monday after the conference. And those are holidays and so French amusement parks ready for the deluge.
So you see the process that led us to looking at other amusement parks, ones that are maybe more remote or smaller and maybe less likely to be overcrowded. This is how bunnyhugger came to know of Nigloland and its curious origins as a sort of homemade copy of a Disney park. And how she came to find another park, this one just over the Belgian border, Plopsaland De Panne. There are several Plopsaland parks, including another in Belgium, but the good part about De Panne --- the city it's in --- is that the place is on the end of an interurban trolley line that runs along the Belgian coast, offering the chance to make a Shore visit of things.
This then is how we got the rough plan for the trip. Academic conference in northwestern France, Nigloland in eastern France, Plopsaland in coastal Belgium. The catch --- one catch --- is the only direct flight from Detroit lands us in Paris and so we're left with a bonkers zig-zagging itinerary. A solution that would at least space things out, though, was to move one of the amusement park visits to before the conference, allowing us to arrive in Paris and finish that day getting to --- well, I told you already, it was Nigloland. Then after that, take the train back to Rennes, and after that the train up to De Panne, and fly from somewhere in Belgium back to the United States. This way we could hit the French park the day after the Ascension holiday, and get to the Belgian park the Saturday before Pentecost, and with luck nothing would be too bad. The only cost of this: bunnyhugger had to finish her paper a couple days earlier still, but the deal sounded great. I asked for and got a luxurious seven days off --- six that would actually be in France or transit plus a day after to recover --- and our plans were set.
That set up, now please enjoy a half-dozen Jackson County Fair 2024 pictures.

Part of the curious layout of the exhibition building is some fake storefronts such as this, Ye Old Bakery. I think the previous year it had housed some of the baked-good exhibits but this year it just had placeholders.

Here's a bee-themed exhibit long with some ribbon-winning honeys.

And then a couple little setups. I guess one is to be the perfect camping setup. Behind that, on the left, I'm not sure; backyard picnic? It's a strange exhibit.

Genuinely don't know if this is a bunch of exhibits or if the entire General Store layout is a single exhibition.

Some prize-winning vegetables along with the memento mori that they're all to be tossed in the green dumpster outside.

This little water wheel is at the head of the creek that runs through the center of the building, and the flowers all around that.
Trivia: Hamburg had been the original intended target for the first thousand-bomber air raid, which would have happened on the centennial of the Great Fire of 1842, but the forecast for thunderstorms changed the target to Cologne. Source: The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorous, John Emsley. Wikipedia also notes Cologne, unlike Hamburg, was entirely within range of the Royal Air Force's GEE navigation system at the time.
Currently Reading: Archaeology, January/February 2025, Editor Jarrett A Lobell.