Have you ever seen 150’ high dunes? How about apple orchards and asparagus fields covering the countryside? And that’s just getting to Silver Lake, MI for the Apple BBQ Festival. The perfect weather accompanied a Classic Car/OVR and Dune Buggy Show, craft artists, live music, and everything/anything apple! A 5K Apple-a-Day race along with an Apple Pie contest brought additional weekend competitions for this event situated on Silver Lake, MI next to the Big Lake!
So, while the granddaddy BBQ event, The American Royal, was happening in Kansas City, this event showed that the Midwest folks know how to ‘Que too with Bad Habit BBQ earning the prized 180 on Pork Ribs! 48 teams vied for Grand Champion honors with the top points going to Big “E” BBQ with a 694.3 score and Reserve Grand Champion awarded to Big Brothers BBQ coming in at 689.7.
In the Shade Tree Competition, Up In Smoke BBQ won the Chicken category and Rub A Dub Grub won Pork Ribs during the Friday event.
Silver Lake is always one of our favorite’s venues even though it’s on the tail end of the Summer Season. There are plenty of craft beer breweries, hiking, incredible dunes (take a ride with Mac Dunes Buggy Rides to get a real feel of how vast the sand dunes are), and one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, Lake Michigan. Silver Lake State Park is a short walking distance to the festival as well as several cabins. We bet that if you came to the area, it would be on your list of annual places to visit for many years to come!
Mike and Marcia
