Clark County Fair has something for everyone

The laboratory is teeming with mad scientists and robots, levitating orbs and gravity waves, engineering realities and optical illusions. Next door is a related world: video and board games, comic books and character cards, superheroes and super-villains in costume.

Now, step out into the sunshine for your mandatory livestock and farm kids, racing pigs and swimming dogs, hot dogs and pie, crowd-pleasing country rock and that great big carnival.

Summer’s Best Party has all the bases covered, from the agricultural traditions of yesteryear through the pop culture of right now, and straight on through science and technology toward tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be a total hoot, judging by the Clark County Fair’s new main feature for 2016, “Fun Science Experience.” The fair has teamed up with regular display builder Jason Greeley-Roberts and sponsors KATU and K103-FM to create the ultimate, interactive mad-scientist lab where you can test “theories” like gravity, mess around with magnetism and get to know Isaac Newton and the three crucial laws he somehow managed to pass without any help from Congress.

People who’ve survived the Halloween-season “Clark County Scaregrounds” and earlier fair attractions like last year’s Superhero Adventure have already experienced the magical imagination of Greeley-Roberts, who comes by this kind of indoor-spectacle construction honestly: His father was an early display builder for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Also keeping the fair scientific will be students, faculty and staff from Clark College, which is so eager to drum up business, it’ll waive the regular $25 fee for anyone who applies for admission onsite at the fair. Academic programs like automotive engineering, computer science and biology will be on hand with interactive displays; so will student groups like the rocket-launching Aerospace Club and the (Not Even Remotely Dorky) N.E.R.D. Girls.

There’s nothing remotely dorky about attending the fair disguised as a superhero. Just find the FairCon, a mini-convention of gamers and games of every description. We fully expect to see Superman and Batman, Professor X and Wolverine, Captain America and Iron Man, Spidey and Darth Whichever here — all hunched over the latest video and board and magic-card games. Not to mention standing tall and strutting their stuff during cosplay (“costume play”) contests.

Of course, you’ll be able to snag many of those fantastical, virtual creatures that have been turning up all over the landscape for the last month or so. Fair organizers whisper that there will be two Pokemon Go! gyms and at least seven PokeStops scattered around the Fairgrounds. Score Geodudes by the Jack Giesy Arena; explore the Fun Science Experience lab to infiltrate the Venonat infestation.

Dogs, pigs, kids

If that means nothing to you, don’t sweat it. Just head for the exhibitions where real creatures do real things in what’s known as, uh, reality. Believe it or not, no hand-held screen is needed to see Dock Dogs or pig races, or dress up like a cowpoke and pan for gold at Cowboy Boot Camp, or ride the dizzying, 45-foot Spin Out ride, a new carnival arrival this year.

DockDogs is actually three different contests, all of which involve pooches taking running leaps into a swimming pool as they pursue their targets. Big Air is a measured long jump; Speed Retrieve is a timed swim; and Extreme Vertical is a high jump — to seize a toy that’s suspended in air and rises higher with every round. DockDogs was extremely popular during its last visits to the fair, but it’s been a few years since last time; this year, dozens of local dogs are expected to turn up — with their owners — for a shot at the gold and a chance to climb the national DockDogs ladder toward its Hall of Fame. Learn more about this growing human/pooch sport at DockDogs.com.

Pigs shall also compete for pig glory (ice cream and cookies) during the pig races, and you can place a free bet toward some glory of your own: a free “My Pig Won” ribbon.