9/29/18 Saturday: Our only agenda today was to get our rental car for the next week, and go the the Barbeque on the River event in Paducah. This is a huge event, with over 100 food vendors – over 30 of them smoking up some great BBQ! Add to that, it’s Saturday, so the Farmer’s market would be joining in the fun too. There will be all sorts of things to see, eat, smell, buy, and even some live bands to listen to! Woo-Hoo! Party time! The weather was forecasted to be clear and in the mid 70’s – perfect! The Enterprise Rental Car guy came to pick us up around 9:30. That they even came to pick us up was surprising, since it was nearly a 20 mile journey from Paducah to the Marina to get us. Most Enterprise locations have a five mile radius for client pick-up. As we left the marina, I spied this cute little Pink Tractor place. I think it was a women’s clothing store.
And then… we went through Possum Trot. I don’t think it was big enough to even qualify as a village. It was just a little place along the road, with a few establishments. I wonder if they had their own zip code. Can you imagine telling someone your address – in Possum Trot, Kentucky? HA!
Our driver gave us a great idea for a place to park for the festival, so before you knew it, we were in the middle of the fun. We wandered around the market area first, since it wasn’t quite 11:00, the time when the BBQ festival opened.
There were lots of Fall and Halloween decorations available. I thought these cans were cute. I just haven’t quite wrapped my head around Fall and Halloween time yet!
There was this huge pile of peppers at one of the veggie vendors. The colors were beautiful, and they all looked like tiny little shriveled up pumpkins.
Then we headed into the BBQ festival. The street was full of people, with vendors everywhere! This Barbeque on the River event is all for charity. Last year, over 40,000 people enjoyed over 80,000 pounds of meat, and over $400,000 was raised for various local charities. The whole town smelled great!
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There were some locations that displayed all of their trophies, or had other ways to tell the hungry crowd just how good they have been in the past.
I liked this one: “Off the Bone BBQ – You don’t need teeth to eat our meat” That is some tender BBQ! (Unfortunately, we saw some back country folk who might need to take them up on that claim!) Each vendor had a sign with their name, their site number for the map, and the name of their charity that they were supporting.
Down the way was a hot fudge cake; chocolate cake served with vanilla ice cream and a pile of hot fudge. This was being served by a local church. We did split one before we left the festival – it was good! And we heard about these ribbon fries from some folks at the marina that came to the festival yesterday.
Look at these! A big giant pile of spiral cut taters, deep fried into a pile of crispy goodness. We didn’t get any – we needed to save room for some ribs!
Apparently pigs fly here, too!
We found the booth that the gal at the marina recommended. We had to wait in a line, but it was worth it. (It was much longer when we walked by later in the day.). I also got an idea from another boater that they wished they would have purchased enough BBQ to bring some home. So I brought some zip-lock bags with me. We ordered a full rack of ribs, so that we could eat half, and take half home.
Oh! And some candied bacon. Wowzers! Both the bacon and the ribs were amazing.
This was another crowd favorite – the smokin’ firemen.
We took our yummy ribs over to the beer garden, since there was tables, chairs, beer, and live music there. The beer was $6, but these proceeds went to charity also. We enjoyed listening to a variety of bands for quite awhile. Notice the river boat in the background?
And then we spied a couple of painters who were working on touching up different sections of The Wall. These guys are amazing artists! And yes – the walls are all hand painted.
We had a really fun day at the festival. We ran into four other peeps from the marina, (including Herb), so we sat and listened to music with them for awhile. It is so fun to happen to be in a place where we can participate in local fun events. We also wandered down to the city dock and visited with a couple of boats that we know that will be making their way to Green Turtle Marina tomorrow.
The last band that we listened to was very loud, and between that and being warm and probably a bit dehydrated, I came down with a headache. We were both hot and tired when we got back to the boat, so just laid low for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow, we’ll pack up the car and go on a road trip!