Martinez BBQ Festival & Regional Shoreline

On Sunday, June 19, 2011, Di Yin and I drove up to the town of Martinez in the northeast corner of the San Francisco bay for its King of County BBQ Challenge and Music Festival. Incidentally, I was curious and so looked up the county implied in the title of the festival. Martinez is in Contra Costa County. No signs at the festival specified it.

In Martinez, we passed an oil refinery (they're large!) and long trains with many containers on them. We found the BBQ festival in the Martinez Regional Shoreline.

I took pictures of the festival and of the shoreline. Di Yin also took pictures. The link goes to her first picture from this excursion (which happens to be picture #8 in this album). When you see a picture captioned "the beginning of our trip to LA" (picture #80), you're done with her pictures from the festival. I'll link to her L.A. pictures in the appropriate posts.

It was a big festival. We spent a while browsing the booths, which covered the typical wide variety of art and merchandise one finds at a festival. I also tried two of the three BBQ food stands. Details are in the pictures.

There was a music stage with bands that played old-fashioned rock songs. We could hear the music from most places in the festival including where we ate lunch; it was nice. Surprisingly, despite how far it carried, the music near the stage wasn't too loud.

I liked how the whole festival venue was on grass, a contrast to the many festivals on parking lots or streets. It was comfortable (both to sit on and walk on).

Martinez was hot and sunny, 89 degrees according to my car. It was alright in the breeze, though sadly the festival booths blocked the breeze most of the time. It was also alright in the shade.

After exploring the festival and eating lunch, we walked around the Martinez Regional Shoreline.

Counting the shoreline, we spend a bit over three hours in the area.