Tuesday:
Sorry this is a bit late, but I've been busy. I arrived in Austin on Tuesday afternoon. Matt's plane was late, so we didn't actually meet until close to 5:00pm. Jason showed up right when I did and Matt showed up about a minute later. It was great to meet Jason there. I still can hardly believe he drove all the way from Canada just to meet us at Lockhart. Here is what it looked like when I showed up:
I pretty much stuck with the meat option the entire time. The food at Black's was a notch above that of the other two members of the holy BBQ trinity. Brisket was tender, juicy and delicious and the rib was fabulous:
The inside was the most comfortable too,
but no time for dilly-dallying as we were on a mission. While in Black's we discovered that Smitty's closed at 6:00pm, so we figured we better head there next, and fast, if we were going to make all three stations of the Q. It was about 1.1 miles on the GPS. Walking, however, it was only about 3 blocks and took us no more than 5 minutes, to get to the center of town:
Smitty's was fabulous. It was like visiting a museum. There's been much discussed about the pits in these pages, so I'm just going to post one pic I took:
Inside had a great feel:
My caloric intake was reduced. I decided to go with a pork rib (sacrilege), a slice of brisket and sausage. The bread was strictly for decoration:
The brisket was noticeably undercooked, the rib actually was quite nice and the sausage was fabulous. I love dry sausage and this really hit the spot for me. Next, we were off to Kreuz. This is the farthest station, nearer the highway, and probably a 10 minute walk from Smitty's. We appreciated the walk at this point. This is by far the largest, and from the looks, can handle thousands of pilgrims.
.
We walked around and entered from the front,
by the woodpile:
They're plenty serious here:
They were getting down to the bottom of their brisket run when they got to me, and I actually just had a load of bark:
I'm showing Jason's plate here:
and that wrapped up my first ~ 5 hours in Austin. I'd like to thank Brother Jason for meeting us there. It really made it special and he was a fabulous host and tour guide. :thumb: