Sure, GM and Chrysler are under the thumb of the sorriest White House, but don't underestimate the power of bacon

ANN ARBOR, MICH. -- Keith and Angie Ewing left their home in Friendswood, Tex., at 6 a.m. Thursday. They skirted Shreveport, La., passed through Little Rock and Indianapolis. Twenty-one hours and 1,320 miles later, they arrived here, exhausted.

On Saturday morning, though, they knew the trip had been worth it. The sun shone brightly as the couple sat down to breakfast under a big white tent. Their plates were piled high: with hickory-smoked bacon from Edwards of Surry, Va.; long pepper bacon from Arkansas' Ham I Am; and applewood-smoked bacon from Nueske's in Wisconsin; plus bacon scones and a slice of bacon-apple coffee cake for good measure.

The Ewings' journey is proof -- as if that were necessary -- that where bacon is celebrated, people will come. But this event promised to be more than a destination for porky excess. Camp Bacon was to be a one-day Davos of cured and/or smoked pork. Many luminaries of the bacon world, plus new, rising stars, would be here: Allan Benton, the humble Tennessean whose pork bellies have made chefs swoon from New York to Napa; Herb Eckhouse, whose La Quercia pancetta and prosciutto from Iowa stand up to the best from Italy; and Nick Spencer, a Brit based in Chicago who began making back bacon this spring. Bacon poetry readings and a performance by 73-year-old R&B artist Andre Williams, who wrote a song called "Bacon Fat" in 1956, would help define the meat's cultural impact.

"It's a thinking person's bacon camp," said Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Ann Arbor's gourmet mecca Zingerman's, which hosted the event. "I want to get people off the 'I love bacon' thing: 'Give me any and give me more.' I want them to know the differences between them and how to use them."

The American food renaissance has inspired many to more carefully consider what they eat. But although the finer points of wine, cheese, chocolate and coffee have been embraced with gusto, lots of food lovers have a blind spot for bacon. More, it seems, is always better. The obsession over smoked and cured pork belly has led less often to smart discussions of technique and history and more to bacon eat-athons, bacon memoirs, bacon air fresheners and bacon salt (motto: "Everything should taste like bacon") that contains no bacon at all.