VBS, BBQ and BPS

Not only is North Carolina known for NASCAR, some might also consider it the BBQ capital of the world. There seems to be a BBQ joint on every corner.

After we picked up my great nephew Daniel from Vacation Bible School where he was helping, my niece Dawn, Daniel, Esther and I went to a BBQ restaurant for lunch. Daniel who doesn’t like BBQ had a hamburger steak with fried onions and fries. He drank something called Diet Cheerwine – I have no idea what that is. Dawn had a pork BBQ sandwich with red coleslaw on it, Esther had the BBQ tray with pork BBQ and red coleslaw. I had the BBQ plate with pork BBQ, red coleslaw and French fries. There was so much food, I had to leave about half of mine.

The coleslaw and the BBQ were both quite vinegary. I have no idea what made the coleslaw “red” but it wasn’t because they used red cabbage and it wasn’t really that red. The BBQ sauce was runny and vinegary, not like what we’re used to in Florida.

Following our lunch we all got in my beautiful red pickup and headed for the Concord Mills mall. It’s almost to Charlotte. We went by our exit and had to go two exits past it to find a place to turn around. The Bass Pro Shop seemed bigger than any of the others I’d ever been in. It was also laid out a little differently, but they still had some great stuff.

We then walked through most of the mall, including a Christian book store, an As Seen On TV store, and a pretzel stand – I had a parmesan pretzel. Oh, I also had a strawberry Julius. The others went into multiple stores while I sat and waited and walked along with them. Daniel likes to go to that mall because of the NASCAR store there. They have a number of go-cart tracks, but he couldn’t ride today because they only had two open and he didn’t want to wait 30 minutes in line. They have a lot of video games, tons of NASCAR shirts, miniature cars, and other paraphernalia.

On the way out we went by way of the Food Court and Dawn, Esther and Daniel had gelatos – tiramisu, chocolate and chocolate chip. I had to try a piece of Arthur Treacher’s fish to see if it was as good as I remembered – it wasn’t.

Dawn made some delicious Reuben sandwiches with Ramen noodles for dinner. YUM YUM!!!

Even though I’m in the middle of a great murder mystery, I napped through most of So You Think You Can Dance… I just don’t get those kind of shows and though great, the mystery did not keep me awake. I hope I didn’t snore. How humiliating would that be!

I got to do a lot of people watching today. It sure takes all kinds to make the world. I saw a few guys with their pants hanging down – wouldn’t you just like to grab them and pull them down? – it wouldn’t take much.

Until next time…