Viejas Smokin' in the Park

October 16 - 17, 2009

Alpine, California

This is where our BBQ career started 5 years ago at the Viejas Smokin' in the Park event in Alpine, California. This is a great event with an outlet mall, casino, and bands to keep everyone entertained. This year would take a lot of organizing as we were chosen to represent California at the Jack Daniels World Championship BBQ Competition in Lynchburg, Tennessee. This meant there would be back-to-back weekend competitions 2,000 miles apart. Steve would return to Lancaster on Saturday eve, as Brent Walton was going to ride with him to the “Jack”. Ted and Ardith planned to leave from Alpine for Lynchburg, TN, and Toni and Ron would return home and get ready to fly to Nashville the following Thursday.

Now back to this competition - Pat and Craig Stevenson joined us in Alpine and were a big help serving the people’s choice. The crowd was huge on Saturday everyone would line up for the people’s choice meat before the turn-in time and before you knew it the meat was gone, it was amazing. 

At the awards we placed 7^th overall out of 52 teams. We received 47th in chicken, 5^th in ribs, 1^st in pull pork, and 25^th in brisket. We wish to thank Grant and Jenny Ford and Kelly and Kathleen MacIntosh for keeping everything rolling smoothly. A special thanks goes out to all of the staff at Viejas for a great event year after year!