Negotiating the sprawling South Florida Fair can be more disorienting than a ride on the Spin Out. Where do you start — the bunny tent or the Moo-ternity ward? The hypnotist or the ice skaters? The Sky Ride or the Drag Strip Slide?

For Morris Nusbaum and Rose Moskowitz, friends for more than 60 years, a Friday visit to the fair began on a shady bench near the Ham Bone Express Pig Races track. He was eating a banana. She was eating almonds.

You read that right: With donut burgers, fried Oreos, and Pork Parfaits a ring toss away, the Delray Beach snowbirds opted for fruit and nuts.

That’s their tradition, they said. Front-load with the nutritious, follow with the delicious. But what exactly? Said Nusbaum of his companion, “She plays it by smell.”

Ah, yes, the smells of the fair – the roasted turkey legs, the diesel fuel, all those farm animals and, this year, elephants. The aromas wafted skyward Friday, with the official opening of Palm Beach County’s most widely attended event, now in its 101st year, and they’ll fill the West Palm Beach fairground air through Feb. 3.

The expo hall features walk-through replicas of Air Force One and the Oval Office, a Lincoln Memorial sand sculpture and an impressive collection of rarely seen images of presidents. At Friday’s packed opening ceremony, Steven Abrams, named the first-ever Mayor of Palm Beach County earlier this week, joked that he found the Washington, D.C., theme “a little puzzling, because this is a fair and not a circus.”

But it won the approval of visitors who jockeyed for prime photography positions in front of a faux White House. “I was impressed with all the presidential stuff. I wasn’t expecting that,” said Juno Beach’s Kristi Norris, attending the fair with her husband, daughter and 4-year-old grandson Isaac, who was looking forward to seeing chickens, “but only the ones who don’t get eaten.”

Patrick and Nasya Duncanson of Loxahatchee brought their “nine lambs,” as Patrick calls their nine children, ages 2 to 16 years old. “I used to come as a girl every single year,” Nasya said. “But this is the first time for them, so it’s very exciting.”

More than 588,000 people visited the fair in 2012, and that tally typically climbs every year, says president and CEO Rick Vymlatil. “If the sun’s not shining, it doesn’t matter what we’ve done, the attendance is going to drop,” he said. “But even if it’s raining, we’re still here.”