Lexington, North Carolina Barbecue Festival Review

Every year we go to the Lexington, North Carolina Barbecue Festival to celebrate my birthday. It's a tradition now. The barbecue festival is always on the third or fourth Saturday of October, and this is the 24th year. It gets more popular with each passing year.

We've learned to go early. The festival has won some awards and has been featured in a variety of magzines and newspapers. More and more people show up to enjoy the small town festival in the little town of Lexington, NC. Lexington is located outside the Greensboro, North Carolina - Winston Salem, North Carolina area. They have a Bob Timberlake gallery, and they have Lexington style barbecue. That's barbecue made with a vinegar based sauce - pork served on a bun. The pork is slow smoked, and it's tender and then spicy with the sauce added.

Although Lexington boasts a huge number of barbecue joints, they have a signature sandwich for the festival. That's served from tents up and down the main street. You can get shredded pork on buns with cole slaw (or hold the cole slaw) and curly pig tail fries. Then there are drink stands and all kinds of other foods that you might see at a fair or festival. One of the favorites is the fried apple pie booth. Another one is the fried pork rinds made right there at the festival.

The festival is very family friendly. You'll see all ages. They have small rides and booths for face painting and sand art for the little ones. Women go wild for all the crafts featured at the barbecue festival. Anyone who likes folk crafts will be in hog (pun intended) heaven. The guys can find cool stuff too - like the airplanes and cars made from aluminum cans and the booth with wild ties.

Local cooks show up selling a variety of treats. There are always a few booths with regional barbecue sauces. One of my favorite booths is the cheese dip booth. They give samples and sell packaged mixes to make your own dips. This year they had a lady selling her homemade bread and peanut butter. We're having her sour dough bread with a roast I left cooking in the crock pot this morning. Yum.

You'll see and hear entertainment all day. They have a number of stages and feature local groups as well as some headliners. This year they had Trisha Yearwood. There are also magicians and puppet masters. So, there's quite a variety.

In the center of town, they always have a sand sculpture. This year it was kind of a king pig of the mountain sand art. That's different every year.

I think they're going to have to expand the festival over more days. It's really starting to overwhelm the main street. By noon, it was wall to wall. We arrived around 10 a.m. when it wasn't so crowded and slipped out when it got thick. We always park at the Lexington Plaza (look for the exit on I85 with Cracker Barrel) and ride over for $1 each. When we got back to the parking lot (still called the Wal-Mart parking lot though Wal-Mart has moved), the line to catch a bus in to the festival was long. I've never seen it backed up like that. This will be a banner year I'm sure on the attendance.