Silver Lake Apple BBQ Festival

This past weekend was the big end-of-season event in Silver Lake – the Apple BBQ Festival.  It’s a very popular event, and all of the local campgrounds, including ours, were fully booked.  The festival used to be included in the Kansas City BBQ Competition circuit, but that was dropped for some reason this year, but there were still many BBQ enthusiasts from around Michigan – there was plenty of great BBQ to choose from! 

The event also included a large craft show, musical performances, and a classic car and buggie show scheduled for Saturday.

The weather forecast for Saturday was sounding a little iffy, so we thought we’d go on Friday afternoon to see the craft show and get some BBQ for dinner, and then we could go back again on Saturday if the weather was OK.

Our friend, Kathy, joined us and the three of us rode our bikes into town.

We walked through the craft show first,

 

and we saw lots of really nice stuff.  Kathy found lots of things she was going back for, and I even found a couple of gifts to buy, and a homemade apple crisp kit.  It’s pretty rare that I find things to buy anymore, but I did . . .and I can’t wait to make the apple crisp when we get to South Carolina!

 

 

 

 

After walking through all of the craft booths, we were pretty hungry (the BBQ smell was really getting to us!), so we headed over to the food vendor area.

We checked out all of the BBQ vendors,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and there were several that looked really good . . . and smelled really good, too!

There were BBQ ribs, brisket, pulled pork and BBQ chicken . . . as well as sides like corn on the cob, french fries, and cole slaw.

We looked at all of them and calculated how many tickets we might need, and then went back to select our dinners.  Tom went with the brisket sandwich and I got pulled pork, and Kathy got the pulled pork sundae (pulled pork with mashed potatoes, gravy and cheese – topped with a cherry tomato).

We sat at a picnic table and listened to the band while we enjoyed our dinner.

We were all really happy with our choices, but then some people sat down next to us with ribs . . . and those looked REALLY good!  Tom said if we came back on Saturday, he was getting the ribs!

For dessert, the three of us split a piece of apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and then had to try Petey’s Donuts!

Apple-cinnamon donuts . . . they were good . . . almost as good as the apple orchard back home!

To work off all that food, we walked back through the craft area to pick up all our purchases, and then rode the bikes back to the campground.

On the way past the lake, I spotted a beautiful sunset in progress, and just had to stop for a picture!

Saturday proved to be rainy, as promised, and we weren’t sure if many of the cars were going to show up for the show.  Tom and I ended up spending most of the day inside getting the motorhome ready to leave and doing laundry, and only went out later to go to church and get some ice cream at Country Dairy afterward.

It looked like the rain was done when we got there, but while we ate our ice cream, we had another storm roll through!

It made for a beautiful sunset when we got home, though . . .

 

Just two more days, and we’ll be back on the road!  It’s been a pretty great summer!