Rockin Weekend, Knockin BBQ

Well friends, we had a ROCKIN weekend thanks to the hospitality of my brother and sister in law down in hotter than h*ll St. George, Utah. The median temperature was 100 degrees with the highs around 115, so when I say that we were a hot mess, I'm not kidding. We ventured down to St. George just to get away from it all, but we had also heard some promising rumors about a barbecue place called Troy's. I checked out the menu online and got pretty stoked to go check it out.

It seemed promising--about as drive-by dive as you can get--and smelled amazing. Our food looked fantastic....
...but it kind of went downhill from there. I got the pulled pork, with baked beans and salad. My salad was buried under an enormous pile of bacon and cheese, but i did manage to wrangle a few little green pieces after some excavation.

The sauces were standard: Liquid Gold (Carolina Mustard), Sweet n Tangy, Spicy Vinegar and House. It's hard to mess up BBQ sauce, so those all got a pass, but the meat was not to my liking at all. You can see that it looks pretty decent....
...but up close, it was very fatty and greasy.
I ended up eating less than half after picking through it. My dining companions tried the ribs and beef brisket, and had similar complaints. They also thought most of the sides they tried were fairly bland, especially the potato salad. My baked beans weren't too bad, but definitely benefited from an extra generous squirt of some sassy sauce. I think the one part everyone agreed was worthwhile taste-wise were the corn muffins. They were sweet and moist, if a tad oily for my palette. But heck, I was so hungry after my sad little nibbles of pork that I ate it anyway. I know, I know, what can you expect when you dine at a greasy-spoon besides GREASE? ;) So, sorry Troy, not quite my style.

Even though the 'que was a little blah, the rest of the weekend was awesome, so here are some picks to cheer you up after the disappointing meal. We went hiking through Zion National Park--so pretty! Here's my hot mess self and my hubby.

What are we doing in the river, you ask? Well, there's actually a killer hike called The Narrows where you typically walk through a little drizzly stream for a few miles. Evidently the run-off is a tad high this year. We actually waded knee-deep before realizing that we were about to go swimming if we trecked any farther, so we turned around and hiked this instead.

The Emerald Pools
Don't worry, I didn't try to eat THAT...(hmmm...maybe roasted, with some ketchup??)