Eating Texas Smoked BBQ at Four Places…

The weather gods were with us when we left Lake Sommerville since there was no rain as forecasted during our drive over to Lockhart State Park near Lockhart, Texas. Once we pulled into our site we set up then walked around our campground to check it all out.

It is super green because of all the rains and the wild flowers continue to bloom longer than any other time I can remember for this area. We are here for four nights so other than getting in some walks around the campground and ooohhhing and aaahhhing  over the wildflowers we will be focusing on enjoying some Texas BBQ.

Lockhart Texas is often called the BBQ Capitol of Texas and for good reason. There are four very good BBQ joints in town and several others within a thirty minute drive. We always eat at at least three of the local joints and recently have been trying other ones close by instead of eating at all four of the places in town.

In town this year we ate at Smitty’s BBQ, Black's BBQ and Chisholm Trail BBQ. We ate a different one each night and always came home with some lean brisket and some smoked turkey for dinner. For our own gratification we rank each BBQ joint to see which one we like the best. The last few years Smitty’s has been kicking butt in BBQ according to our taste buds. Would this year be the same?

We have been to a lot of BBQ places in and around this area but for our last stop this year I chose a new one on our list, the Hays County BBQ, in San Marcos, Texas. Rated in the Texas top 50 they have recently expanded their location just south of San Marcos Texas about a 20 minute drive west of our campground. We found this to be a a very nice place with super friendly workers, a must stop for that reason.

So who had the best BBQ according to us this year? Well for starters the worst this year was our last several years best! Smitty’s has apparently started to cut costs like Kreuz BBQ did to us before. They now serve beef shoulder clod as their “lean brisket.”  We quit going to Kreuz BBQ for this same reason! Smoked shoulder clod is NOT lean brisket!!!

To us the best brisket this year was Black’s! But a very close second was Hays County BBQ with Chisolm Trail not far behind the other two. You couldn’t go wrong with any of the these three for smoked brisket or turkey. The smoked turkey winner, by the way was a tie between Smitty’s and Hays County BBQ.

With bellies full of BBQ it is time for us to move on…

NOTE: We are now at Potters Creek CG on Canyon Lake Tx until June 3rd…

Lake Sommerville and Blue Bell Creamery Tx

One last get together with friends in College Station and then it was time to hit the road. We had a flex day built into our schedule so we decided to leave a day early and drive over to Yegua Creek COE Campground near Lake Sommerville for a change in scenery.

Well as bad luck would have it my phone was having charging issues so just before we left College Station we drove over to the local Verizon store to find out what my options were. Well we were out of warranty, of course, but it was open enrollment for signing up for phone insurance. The fellow suggested I sign up and then immediately make a claim that my charging jack was, well, jacked up!

Upon making the claim, it was explained Verizon would send a new refurbished phone overnight to my address. Wait! I don’t have an address… So we called our friend Carol in town and asked if it was okay to use her address for my new phone to be sent to. She agreed which of course meant we would have to drive back into town from Yegua Creek Campground to retrieve my new phone, sigh…

With everything ordered we packed up and left for the lake. This Corps of Engineer park was partly closed due to flooding from all the rain in the area. One loop's road was underwater as well as several picnic sites, the boat ramp and even the amphitheater. We were on a site which was high and dry with a very nice lake view.

The painted buntings were singing all around us and we even spotted a Killdeer feigning as if it had a broken wing in hopes we would follow it away from her lone egg in her nest on the ground. Very cool…

We were only here for two days so we mostly just walked around the park and enjoyed the wild flowers. We did take one side trip over to nearby Brenham Texas. Why would we go to Brenham? Well it is the birthplace for Blue Bell Ice Cream, our absolute favorite ice cream!!!

There is no real tour at the plant but visitors can go to an observation deck where a nice young lady told us what was going on within the manufacturing floor below. They were filling small single serving cups, half gallon containers, and five gallon containers of Homemade Vanilla as well as Cookies and Cream flavors this day. No pictures allowed so you have to take my word for it. We did stop at the ice cream counter to buy a few scoops of Blue Bell ice cream for a $1 per scoop. Yum!

It was a fun two days but it time for us to leave this scenic campsite and head a little further west…

NOTE: We just left Lockhart Texas and moved over to Potters Creek CG on Canyon Lake Tx until June 3rd…