Click on images below to enlarge:
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| King of the County BBQ Festival
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| A typical scene / row of booths at the BBQ Festival.
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There was one booth with great signs in the style of welcome signs but
often hilarious or philosophical. I didn't feel comfortable taking a
picture of the signs--it felt too much like stealing their text.
Di Yin had no such qualms. Here's her
photo. Read them all.
| A booth selling cool birdhouses (very house-like) hung using gnarly,
knotted wood. Neat.
| A colorful booth with many sculptures (metal or plastic) shaped like
sun-bursts or flowers. Some of them spun.
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One booth sold fitted toe rings. I never knew they existed.
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We found a large hat booth that we had fun in for a while (and several
small booths with hats that we ignored). We even bought some hats!
| The kids' play area: rides, rock climbing wall, and more.
| A petting area with a large turtle.
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| A close-up of the turtle.
| A movie of the band that was playing one time we walked by. They're
playing an Elvis song. I took this (low-resolution) movie mainly to
record the music. It's meant to help give a sense of the festival.
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| Food
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| King's BBQ Team,
one of the three professional booths at the festival, has tons of
awards. (See medals in the lower-right.)
| Back Forty Texas
BBQ, another professional BBQ booth. It lists some #1 awards on its
sign.
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The third professional BBQ booth looks pretty unremarkable. There was
no line. I didn't see any awards. I didn't bother photographing it or
eating there.
| "Amateur BBQ alley" was a line of tents of people there for the BBQ
competition, not for selling their wares. Mostly it was just families
relaxing and kicking it.
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| Some people in amateur bbq alley have proper drums for smoking.
| Ribs from Kinder's. They were good but not great. Had a fairly strong
spice rub. The mild bbq sauce was good, but I preferred them without.
Also, I skipped the hot and extra-hot bbq sauce.
| Combination meal from Back Forty:
- Ribs - very different than Kinder's. No rubs to speak of.
Tender meat that pulled easily from the bone. I liked these a lot
better.
I tried them with a three types of bbq sauce: original,
chiptole, and big & smoky. I liked them all but the original was
my favorite. Big & smoky was apty named: it's assertively smoky.
- Baked beans - good, not too thick or syrupy. This beans were
hot in temperature--I couldn't hold that section of the plastic
container on the bottom!
- Coleslaw - good, very crisp, not too much mayo. Also, in
contrast to the beans, the coleslaw section was cold enough to feel the
chill through the bottom of the container.
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| Martinez Regional Shoreline
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| Geese by a pond in the Martinez Regional Shoreline.
| Another look at the pond. This picture conveys the typical landscape in
the area.
| Adjacent to the shoreline is some landscaped park-land, part of the
Martinez Waterfront Park.
| A path through the tidal area, with a bridge in the distance.
It's hard to tell from this picture, but the deeper-green grass at the
far right of the photograph is as tall as a person.
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| An inlet from the San Francisco bay. This picture looks north across
the bay from Martinez to Benicia.
| I'm not sure if this rig/dock in the distance in the bay is connected
with the nearby refinery. Regardless, it's a nice setting.
Sorry for the blockiness; I took this with a 10x optical zoom and 2x
digital zoom.
| A look back at the marshy land in the regional shoreline, with another
bridge in the distance and, beyond it, some hillside Martinez houses.
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