Living Our Dream

World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest

2013-05-22T16:27:41-04:00

World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest

Southaven, MS - Events of Friday, May 17, 2013

As we said in our last post, we love the barbecue in Memphis. By happenstance, our arrival in the Memphis area coincided with the start of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Is this our lucky day or what?

The contest is part of the month-long Memphis in May celebration which also includes a music festival on Beale Street earlier in the month and the Sunset Symphony later in the month. The barbecue contest was held this year from Thursday, May 16 through Saturday, May 18. There was free admission on Thursday and Friday from 11:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. We decided to go on Friday to take advantage of the free admission.

The barbecue contest is held in Tom Lee Park down along the banks of the Mississippi. The water was high, but it didn't flood the park so the event went off as scheduled. Parking near the park is hard to find and expensive during special events. Since we wanted to stop at the visitor center to pick up some information on other things to do in Memphis anyway, we decided to leave the car in the visitor center parking lot and take the trolley to Tom Lee Park. Trolley rides only cost $1 per person per trip, which was a whole lot better than $10 or $20 for special event parking we saw near the park. There is a trolley stop right across the street from the visitor center, and there are also stops conveniently located at both ends of the Tom Lee Park.

Memphis trolley

Tom Lee Park is about a mile long, and it was filled from end to end with competitors' booths. The photo below shows only about a third of the park.

Barbecue contest competitors' booths at Tom Lee Park

There was a threat of rain in the forecast, so we took along our trusty Frogg Togg raincoats. We ended up not needing them this time because the rain held off; but it was nice to have them with us just in case. They are easy to carry because they are light weight, and they came with carrying bags that we can easily sling over our shoulders.

Unfortunately, there was rain for one or two days prior to the event which caused much of Tom Lee Park to become a mud hole. The competitors setting up on Wednesday and the crowds who attended the event on Thursday churned up lot of mud. Fortunately, the walkways in the park are all paved, and some of the mud had dried or had been cleaned off the pavement by Friday. We had to be a little careful where we stepped, but the mud looked a lot worse than it was.

Tom Lee, for whom the park is named, was a Memphis hero. When a steamer capsized in 1925, Tom Lee rescued 32 people from the Mississippi River in his small skiff. There is a monument in the park to Tom Lee.

Monument to Tom Lee, who rescued 32 people from a capsized steamer

Teams who enter the barbecue contest vie for cash prizes totaling over $100,000 and for bragging rights. If we had to venture a guess, we would say the bragging rights are more important than the money as evidenced by the extensive displays of trophies and banners boasting many of the teams' past wins.

Display of trophies and banners from past wins

The large banner to the left in the photo below indicates this team (the Red Hot Smokers) was the Grand Champion of the 2013 Memphis Barbecue Network Invitational held in March. The entire tent in the center of the photo was filled with more of the the team's trophies.

More banners and trophies

The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest has 5 main categories - pork shoulder, ribs, whole hog, anything but and patio porkers. Anything but is anything other than pork and includes a number of subcategories such as poultry, beef, wings, sauces and seafood as well non-food categories of best booth and best T-shirts. Patio porkers is a class intended for small, amateur teams.

Due to health department restrictions, the competitors are not allowed to serve food to the attendees. However, there are food vendors that sell barbecue as well as the all usual types of food one would find at a carnival or fair (we call it fair fare) like turkey legs, funnel cakes, ice cream, hot dogs and French fries.

Food vendor aisle at the barbecue contest

The most popular activities at the barbecue contest, such as the announcement of winners of the day's judging and concerts, take place in the evening. That's the reason for free admission early in the day on Thursday and Friday. However, preparation of the meat and the smokers, which takes place during the day, are interesting to watch. The whole hog teams were scurrying about on Friday preparing their hogs and smokers so they could slow-cook the hogs all night in time for judging during the day on Saturday.

Whole hog on the table covered in bags of ice

Another team preparing their hog for smoking

Previous winners working on their hog

Some teams use charcoal to cook, some use wood and some use gas to fire their grills and smokers. The team in the next photo was using wood.

Team member tending the fire

In addition to watching the preparation of the meats and smokers, it was also fun to see some of the elaborate booths. Quite a few are two-story affairs, and there were even a couple that were three stories.

Two and three-story booths

Some booths were decorated with various themes like the western flair of the Best Little Boarhouse in Memphis.

Best Little Boarhouse in Memphis

Then there was the tropical theme of the Parrot Head Porkers.

Parrot Head Porkers

Some of the team names are a hoot. There were names like Aporkalypse Now, Sweet Swine O' Mine, Boars R Us, Pig-A-Licious, Bush Hogs, Big Al and the Butt Rubbers, Butt Cassidy and the Pork Dance Kids, and The Count Bastie Porkestra.

As is often the case as we travel around the country, we found a Pittsburgh connection in Memphis. One of the teams had a Pittsburgh Penguins "Let's Go Pens" towel and a Pittsburgh Steeler Terrible Towel displayed at their booth. Memphis in May also salutes a different foreign country each year, and the country this year is Sweden. That's the reason we saw so many Swedish flags on display like the one in the next photo.

"Let's Go Pens" towel and Steelers Terrible Towel

In spite of the mud and the clouds, we had a good time at the contest watching all the preparations and seeing the elaborate booths. We stopped for one more photo on the way out of the park to commemorate our visit to the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

Paul and Margery at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest

We caught the trolley back to the visitor center where we had parked.

Riding the trolley back to the car

Smelling the aroma of barbecue all afternoon certainly made us hungry. We were tempted by the fair fare; but most of it was expensive, and there was no place to sit to eat. Therefore, we decided to stop for lupper on the way back to the motor home at the Bar-B-Q Shop, which is one of our favorite Memphis barbecue joints.

Bar-B-Q Shop

We both had a large chopped pork sandwich on Texas toast instead of a bun with fries and slaw for our sides. The pork is tender and moist, and we love their sauce. The sauce is tart (but not sour) and a little sweet. The barbecue is nicely complimented by the slaw, which is sweet and a little tart. Sandwiches range in price from about $4.25 to $6, and sandwich plates (with two sides) are about $7.50 to $10. Dinner plates cost $10 for chopped pork to around $15 for ribs.

Margery and her chopped pork sandwich

With our bellies full, we headed back to the motor home where we spent the evening and the weekend relaxing. There is more planned for Memphis, so stay tuned.

Little Rock to Memphis

2013-05-21T17:20:18-04:00

Little Rock to Memphis

Southaven, MS - Events of Thursday, May 16, 2013

On Thursday, we packed up the motor home, unhooked the utilities, dumped our holding tanks and hooked up the toad - all in the pouring rain. We thought about waiting a while for the rain to stop; but the weather radar didn't show a break coming for quite some time, and we were anxious to get going. We also had our new Frogg Togg raincoats to keep us dry, so we forged ahead.

We got on the road around 10:00 a.m. for a three-hour drive to Memphis. When we went to Memphis in the past, we always stayed at Tom Sawyer RV Park. Tom Saywer is located across the river from Memphis, TN in West Memphis, AR. The campground is located right on the Mississippi River, which is both a plus and a minus. The plus is we like to watch the barges go up and down the river.

This time of year, we always run the risk of bumping into the minus...flooding along the Mississippi. Local officials order the campground to close any time the river level goes above 31.5' in Memphis. We got an e-mail from the campground ahead of time warning us they would probably be closing, so we made reservations at EZ Daze RV Park a few miles to the south of Memphis in Southaven, MS instead. As it turned out, it was a good thing we did because the Mississippi crested at around 34' a couple of days before we arrived in the Memphis area.

As we approached the bridge to cross the Mississippi from Arkansas, Margery snapped a few photos of the high water. In the next photo, the water is supposed to be behind the row of trees in the distance.

High water along the Mississippi

Another view of high water along the Mississippi

We pulled into EZ Daze RV Park around 1:00. EZ Daze has about 85 sites, 14 or 15 of which are pull-throughs. The roads and pads are paved, and there is a small, paved patio for each site. The patio is better suited to 5th wheels than motor homes because it located toward the rear of the site. There is well-manicured grass between each site and there are a few very small trees.

Our site at EZ Daze RV Park

View down the road at EZ Daze

The sites all have full hookups with 30/50-amp electric. There is free cable and free Wi-Fi that was fairly fast except for a few evenings when everyone in the campground must have been trying to get online at the same time. There is also a pool, a hot tub and a dog run.

The rates a EZ Daze are $40 a night including tax or $240 a week. The weekly rate works out to a little over $34 a night.

Judging from the small size of the trees and the bright appearance of the concrete, the campground seems to be relatively new, and already they are expanding. They are adding 49 new sites across the road. Unfortunately, the noise from the construction was pretty loud a couple of the days we were there - even on one Saturday. Fortunately, it was hot on those days, so we just ran the air which drowned out most of the construction noise. EZ Daze is located only a short distance from I-55, so there is a fair amount of traffic noise all day and all night.

Depending on the direction of the wind, the campground can also be on the flight path of Memphis International Airport. Memphis serves as the hub for FedEx, so if the wind is right (or maybe we should say if the wind is wrong), there are lots of planes flying over, especially in the wee hours of the morning as planes depart to deliver their overnight packages to the intended destination cities. There is also another series of take-offs in the late afternoon, but the ones at 2:30 to 4:30 a.m. are a lot more annoying.

A couple of days after we arrived in Memphis and after the Mississippi had started to subside, we decided to drive back across the river in the car to see if we could get a look at Tom Sawyer RV Park to see what shape it was in. Unfortunately, the entrance road was as far as we got because the road was still under two feet of water about a quarter of the way into the campground.

Entrance road to Tom Sawyer RV Park under water

One of the things we like about Memphis in addition to watching barges on the Mississippi is the barbecue. This year, our stay coincided with the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.

Old State House

2013-05-20T18:03:49-04:00

Old State House

Little Rock, AR - Events of Tuesday, May 14 to Wednesday, May 15, 2013

After our walk across the Big Dam Bridge that we wrote about in our last post, we headed to downtown Little Rock to see the Old State House Museum.

Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas. Although we have visited a number of state capitol buildings, we have never toured the one in Little Rock. We didn't tour it on this stop either, but we decided to visit the building that once served as the state capitol until 1911 when the current capitol building was completed.

The Old State House is the oldest surviving capitol building west of the Mississippi. It was used for several different purposes following the relocation of the state government to the new building in 1911. In 1947, the building became a museum. The Old State House Museum underwent a three-year restoration that was completed in 1999.

Old State House Museum

The Old State House has three sections - one for each branch of the government. The center section with its large pediment and four Doric columns was for the legislature, the west section (left) was for the executive branch and the east section was for the judicial branch.

Legislative section of the Old State house

The original design was for a larger structure built from stone, but the design was revised prior to starting construction due to budget limitations. The size was reduced, the stone was replaced by stucco-covered brick, and tin was used for the roof material instead of the copper. Inside, faux graining was used on doors and woodwork and faux marbling was used on mantles. Construction started in 1833 and was well underway when Arkansas became a state in 1836.

In 1885, the building was expanded. The portico and columns on the back side of the center section were removed, and the building was extended 50' to accommodate a larger legislature for the growing population. The rear portico was not replaced following the expansion.

The fountain in front of the State House is a 1998 recast of the original fountain, which was made for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia by a foundry that made cannons for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The original fountain was placed in front of the State House in 1878. It remained dry until the installation of city water in 1880.

1998 reproduction of the original 1876 Centennial Fountain

Inside the museum is a piece of the original 1876 fountain.

Rusted piece of the original fountain

The State house was originally designed as three separate buildings connected by covered walkways as shown in the artist rendering below. The walkways were later enclosed and were eventually extended to the two-story, enclosed hallways that exist today.

The State House was originally three separate buildings connected by covered walkways.

Inside the museum are a number of permanent and traveling exhibits that include a section on the history of the building itself plus many historical Arkansas artifacts. Paul thought the old typewriter in the next photo was interesting. Many youngsters today have never even seen a typewriter much less used one.

1920s typewriter

There are also several period rooms that have been designed and furnished by various civic groups. Unfortunately, although there were signs giving credit to the group that was responsible for each room, we couldn't find any information about what periods the rooms represented or why they were significant.

Period room set up as a library

A good bit of the second floor is dedicated to the first families of Arkansas. There were exhibits of memorabilia from some of the more well-known Arkansas governors including Orval Faubus who was governor during the 1957 desegregation crisis in Little Rock that we learned about when we visited the Central High School National Historic Site a few days prior.

Memorabilia from Governor Orval Faubus

Governor Mike Huckabee, who was once a presidential candidate, was also represented in the museum.

Memorabilia from Governor Mike Huckabee

There were also some cardboard cutouts of past governors. We don't know who the ones are to the left, but Bill Clinton with his saxophone to the right was certainly recognizable. Bill Clinton is probably one of the best-known governors of Arkansas. The William J. Clinton Presidential Library is located in Little Rock, and you can click here to read about our 2009 visit to his library.

Cardboard cutouts of several past Arkansas governors including Bill Clinton

There was also a fairly large display of Arkansas first ladies' ball gowns; but unfortunately, the lighting, which is kept low to avoid fading, was too dim for photos.

Also on the second floor are two legislative chambers. The smaller one is furnished the way it would have been around 1836 when Arkansas first became a state. After the 1885 expansion of the building, the legislature moved across the hall to a larger chamber in the newly added wing. Today, the larger chamber is used to display various plaques and photos detailing the history of the Arkansas.

1836 legislative chamber

After we finished our tour of the Old State House, we stopped for a late lunch at Cotham's in the City. Cotham's in the City is the sister restaurant to Cotham's Mercantile that we have gone to in the past. Cotham's Mercantile is located in an old general store in Scott, AR about 10 or 12 miles to the east of Little Rock. Cotham's in the City is located only a few blocks away from the Old State House, so it made sense to go there instead of driving all the way to Scott.

Cotham's in the City

Cotham's is the home of the Hubcap Burger. The Hubcap Burger is huge - about 8" diameter - so we split one. The burger comes with regular fries for $10; but we substituted an order of sweet potato fries at a nominal upcharge for Paul, and we added an order of onion rings for Margery.

Hubcap Burger with sweet potato fries for Paul and onion rings for Margery

Margery with her half of the Hubacp Burger

The burger is not only large, but it is also thick. The extra thickness helps keep the burger nice and juicy during cooking. The bun is also big, but it's not too thick. That makes for more meat and less bun, which gives the burger plenty of good, beefy flavor.

We decided to share a piece of Mississippi Mud Pie for dessert. Cotham's version has a layer of vanilla ice cream between two layers of dense, chocolate cake. The whole thing is smothered in hot fudge and topped off with a couple of dollops of whipped cream. We shared a piece the first time we went to Cotham's Mercantile several years ago, and we remembered it was yummy. We were planning to share a whole piece this time, but our waitress warned us a whole portion was huge and advised us the half portion size was plenty for two. She was right. Even the half portion was big.

Mississippi Mud Pie

Since the new Arkansas Capitol is only about two blocks from Cotham's, we decided it was only fitting we should at least drive past to take a quick photo since we weren't planning on touring it this time in Little Rock. On the way there, we passed three horsemen traveling down the road. When we first saw them from a distance, we thought they were cowboys, and we had been somehow transported to Texas. As we got close, however, we realized they were mounted police.

Mounted police in downtown Little Rock

Current Arkansas Capitol building

After driving past the capitol, we headed back to the motor home for an evening of TV. The next day (Wednesday), we mixed relaxation with a few chores in preparation for our departure on Thursday. We'll tell you where we went in our next post.