DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowans are just days away from the "Best Days Ever" after many months and hours of planning.
"I can't wait until I wake up at 6:30 a.m. on that first day of the fair, smelling the friers turn on, the grills are cooking, you hear the sound where people are just kinda coming in, and you hear the roar... you know the Iowa State Fair is here to start," said Eric Campbell, Owner of Campbell Concessions.
The creation of the Iowa State Fair doesn't just happen overnight.
"We really do start almost the day after the fair, but going up to it 2 months before the fair, we're pretty much here seven days a week and we're here eight hours," Campbell said. "Now two weeks prior to the fair, we're pretty much here 12 hour days until we get everything going."
The setup of the fair requires thousands of people for different tasks.
Some of those tasks include putting flags on 120 flag poles and carefully transporting 70 entries for the dollhouse competition.
"When you really just think about it, it's all those little details that when people come to the fair, they probably don't think about all the planning and details that went behind the scenes," said Jeremy Parsons, CEO of the Iowa State Fair.
But fair workers are making sure the details are perfected, so the first customer who comes through the gate is as happy as the last customer to leave the gate.
Campbell Concessions hires about 500 employees for the state fair, they say it takes everybody to make their world work.
In the final days before the fair, emotions are running high. But Campbell says that the feeling when it does come around will be a "big relief".
"But at the end of the day, I'm excited to see all of our past fairgoers, the new generations coming there..." Campbell said. "You know, we have the greatest fair in the United States by far."