News Photo by Darby Hinkley A view of the Alpena County Fair midway earlier this week.

ALPENA — The small number of rides at the Alpena County Fair was caused by a carnival company double-booking two fairs, an official said Thursday.

“This year, our carnival double-booked two fairs in the same week,” Fair Board Treasurer Lynn Borke told The News. “They came to us and asked to move our fair (to a different week).”

Because a week makes a huge difference for the 4-H kids who raise pigs and cattle, in particular, the board couldn’t move the date of the fair.

“Bay County (the other fair booked) said, ‘No, we can’t move,'” Borke said. “We also had other people booked (for events). It wasn’t the best idea for our people. Our carnival said, ‘I can drop one of you or I can give you each half a show.'”

The fair’s prior carnival provider, Skerbeck Carnival, isn’t coming back to Alpena because revenues dropped and it went with other fairs. Borke noted many people have talked about how they used to love the Skerbeck Carnival when they attended fairs.

“I loved them, too, but they’re not coming back,” Borke said. “We have the carnival we can get.”

This year’s carnival provider is D and R Shows. Owner Ron Able said he, too, was double-booked.

“I had a three-year contract with Bay County and it was under a new contract with the Alpena fair,” Able said. “I didn’t want to cancel either one.”

Since he didn’t want to cancel either contract, he had to split the number of rides he sent to each show.

“This will not happen again,” he said. “We wrote this up the best we could.”

Able said he understands people aren’t happy.

“It wasn’t the fair board’s fault and it wasn’t the fair company’s fault,” he said. “It was just a complete mixture of bad situations.”

Jordan Spence can be reached at jspence@thealpenanews.com or 989-358-5687.