*Photo by @rt395

The third SoCal Steemit meetup!!

I had been waiting for this day ever since it was planned, counting down the days as it got closer. This was the day of the SoCal Steemit meetup and BBQ at Fairmount Park in Riverside, Ca. In our previous meet up we had discussed possibly doing a BBQ and we decided Riverside was a fairly central location in SoCal. So I started scouting possible locations. The first place I scouted out was Fairmount Park and I was quite impressed. The park is quite pretty with some nice lakes, lots of big trees, plenty of picnic tables and BBQs... couldn't really ask for anything more. So I headed home, told the other members that I had found a really good spot, and I wrote up the invite post!

That's when the wait began...

As each day went by we got more Steemians joining the Discord group and more people saying they wanted to come to the BBQ... my excitement just kept building!

And then the day finally came!

In the days prior, in all my excitement I had made multiple trips to the store and had all kinds of good food planned. So I spent ALL morning in the kitchen. Blending, chopping, mixing... Then I loaded it all up into the truck and headed down to the park! I met @rt395 there and he had already found us a perfect spot. We got the tables setup and started unloading all the food. As we did that more members began to arrive!

We had Steemit melon

Lots of veggies

And multiple cheeses

We had food galore!

And delicious fresh squeezed lemonade to drink

As everyone arrived it just got more and more fun. There were lots of great conversations... Steemit, crypto, blogging, recipes, gardening, hiking adventures... all kinds of great topics. And at one point we decided to do the "flaunt your foil" contest since we had plenty of foil around for the BBQ. So we made a giant tin foil hat for the whole group!! We talked and ate food, talked some more and ate some more... and although we ate a ton of food there was still a TON of leftovers.

Enjoying the food and each others company

Grill master @rt395

The most delicious veggie burger ever!

@dennisauburn, me, and @csusbgeochem1 with our giant foil hat
*Photo by @rt395

@madpotters and @mattlovell "flaunting their foil"
*Photo by @rt395

@creationofcare and @beckymeep chatting away

Even the dogs were having fun!

Group photo. Starting on the left we have @nutinbutdatruth, @madpotters, @creationofcare, @mariannewest, @mattlovell, @dennisauburn, @derekrichardson, and @csusbgeochem1
*Photo by @rt395

At the end of the day as it started to get dark we began to pack up our stuff, but no one seemed to want to leave. We were all having so much fun just chatting away until it was totally dark and time for us to need to leave the park. Needless to say I think this meetup was a HUGE success and I'm so happy to have made such awesome friends!!