This weekend was a great weekend, L Bird and I went up to Oktoberfest on Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid with another couple. It was kind of a whirlwind trip, because we drove up Saturday and drove home Sunday, but we packed a lot in.
We left Saturday morning fairly early, we were on the road around 8 AM. We had 4 ½ hours of driving in the rain. That was awesome (Can you detect the hint of sarcasm?) But along the way we learned a lot of interesting tidbits from each other about zombie apocalypse plans, bears scratching pine trees, and newgross interesting uses for salad bar containers. But we finally arrived and checked into our hotel.
It was around lunchtime, so we dropped our bags off in our rooms and headed straight to the festival. We got there and hit a beer vendor quickly. Then we lazily wandered through the vendors in the drizzle. It was pretty cold so the girls went in search of gloves/mittens. They ended up finding one tent with gloves, but with it being as cold as it was everyone was buying gloves and there were only two pair left. Dinker’s girlfriend “Cheesepaws Mom” (Yes, that is her nickname until we can come up with a better one.) bought one pair and while L Bird was going to grab the last pair, some lady in pajama pants scooped them on her. So Cheesepaws Mom shared her gloves with L Bird so they had one glove on their beer hand to keep it warm. They both looked like beer drinking Michael Jacksons with one red glove on, but it worked for them.
We finally talked L Bird into taking the gondola ride up to the peak of Little Whiteface. L Bird is pretty afraid of heights so I knew this was going to interesting. Being the loving husband I am, the first thing I did when I got in the gondola was grab my video camera and start filming L Bird’s reactions.
and here is the video:
and another: If you look way down you can see a little white speck of the huge oktoberfest tent.
We made it to the summit where it was only 32°F and a mix of snow and rain. We wandered around and snapped a few pictures where we could.
You have to have drinks for the ride.
Then we headed back down to the festival. We got there we were just in time for the Alpine Trio. They were pretty cool, because they played the giant Alpine Horns from the Ricola commercials.
After they played a few songs they scanned the crowd looking for people who would come up on stage and give playing the horn a shot. L Bird was lucky enough to get picked, so she marched up there and gave it her best. (The lead player said it sounded like “the Canadian geese are back”). But that was pretty cool that L Bird got the chance to do it and she was pretty excited about it because it was all we heard about for the next few hours.
We were finally done with the festival and pretty hungry so we drove into town and had dinner at The Lake Placid Pub & Brewery. The food and beers were great, I won’t go into any detail because I posted about it on my beer blog and you can check that post out here.
After dinner we headed out in search of swim shorts/suits. I hadn’t realized that the hotel where we were staying had an indoor pool and hot tub so no one packed any suits. We drove around and finally found an Olympia Sports store. So we hit the bargain rack and everyone ended up with shorts. We raced back to the hotel got changed and hit the pool. We relaxed between the pool and hot tub for about an hour trying to be polite to the other bathers. We finally called it quits after the hot tub got rather crowded with a few French, possibly French Canadians “joined” us.
We went back to our rooms, had a beer and called it a night. The next morning we checked out of the hotel where Dinker and I got eye humped by some barefoot European guy just hanging out in the lobby. So we quickly got the hell out of there and drove into town and found some breakfast. After breakfast, we wandered through downtown and did a little shopping. Dinker, Cheesepaws Mom, and I got new hats at a rocking hat store, but other than that it was a pretty uneventful shopping trip. So we loaded up the car headed for home.
All in all it was a very quick trip but a ton of fun. Hopefully we’ll be able to repeat it next year with a few other friends as well. Have you have been to Oktoberfest???
We left Saturday morning fairly early, we were on the road around 8 AM. We had 4 ½ hours of driving in the rain. That was awesome (Can you detect the hint of sarcasm?) But along the way we learned a lot of interesting tidbits from each other about zombie apocalypse plans, bears scratching pine trees, and new
It was around lunchtime, so we dropped our bags off in our rooms and headed straight to the festival. We got there and hit a beer vendor quickly. Then we lazily wandered through the vendors in the drizzle. It was pretty cold so the girls went in search of gloves/mittens. They ended up finding one tent with gloves, but with it being as cold as it was everyone was buying gloves and there were only two pair left. Dinker’s girlfriend “Cheesepaws Mom” (Yes, that is her nickname until we can come up with a better one.) bought one pair and while L Bird was going to grab the last pair, some lady in pajama pants scooped them on her. So Cheesepaws Mom shared her gloves with L Bird so they had one glove on their beer hand to keep it warm. They both looked like beer drinking Michael Jacksons with one red glove on, but it worked for them.
We finally talked L Bird into taking the gondola ride up to the peak of Little Whiteface. L Bird is pretty afraid of heights so I knew this was going to interesting. Being the loving husband I am, the first thing I did when I got in the gondola was grab my video camera and start filming L Bird’s reactions.
and here is the video:
We made it to the summit where it was only 32°F and a mix of snow and rain. We wandered around and snapped a few pictures where we could.
You have to have drinks for the ride.
Then we headed back down to the festival. We got there we were just in time for the Alpine Trio. They were pretty cool, because they played the giant Alpine Horns from the Ricola commercials.
After dinner we headed out in search of swim shorts/suits. I hadn’t realized that the hotel where we were staying had an indoor pool and hot tub so no one packed any suits. We drove around and finally found an Olympia Sports store. So we hit the bargain rack and everyone ended up with shorts. We raced back to the hotel got changed and hit the pool. We relaxed between the pool and hot tub for about an hour trying to be polite to the other bathers. We finally called it quits after the hot tub got rather crowded with a few French, possibly French Canadians “joined” us.
We went back to our rooms, had a beer and called it a night. The next morning we checked out of the hotel where Dinker and I got eye humped by some barefoot European guy just hanging out in the lobby. So we quickly got the hell out of there and drove into town and found some breakfast. After breakfast, we wandered through downtown and did a little shopping. Dinker, Cheesepaws Mom, and I got new hats at a rocking hat store, but other than that it was a pretty uneventful shopping trip. So we loaded up the car headed for home.
All in all it was a very quick trip but a ton of fun. Hopefully we’ll be able to repeat it next year with a few other friends as well. Have you have been to Oktoberfest???
That sounds like a lot of fun. I think that I will try and convience my wife to go next year. It looks like you guys had a ton of fun. Your blog is highly enjoyable.
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