Oktoberfest is the hap-hap-happiest time of year! The great
Munich celebration of beer now has copycats all over the world . I’m sure the
real thing is still one of a kind. I haven’t been yet, but it’s on my list! I
say that about lots of places and events and check them off as I see them, but
my list seems to keep getting longer rather than shorter as I age.

Not finding the right opportunity to attend the daddy of
them all I make do with copycat Oktoberfests, and Breckenridge now has one of
the biggest and best ones on a weekend in September every year. That coincides
with some of the best hiking weather of the year in Colorado, so I decided to
take a timeshare week in Breckenridge to coincide with Oktoberfest and top
aspen color week at the highest elevations. My buddies Tim and Toby also came
up from Denver for the weekend.

I’ve now been to Oktoberfest in Breckenridge on three
occasions – in 2009, 2010, and 2012, the first two times on day trips from
Denver. Saturday is the biggest day and somewhat out of control. Several blocks
of Main Streets are closed to traffic and are wall-to-wall people with very
long waits for beers and for food . Sunday is a little more subdued, and it’s
actually possible to get an adequate amount of beer and watch the German
dancing and show without the massive crowds.

Breckenridge is a cute town with a mostly Victorian style of
architecture in the original town. Not all that much of it is original, though,
since it had dwindled to a near ghost town by the 1950s before growing
massively as a ski resort town. Vail’s faux-Tyrolean architecture and
pedestrian village would seem to be more consistent with the Oktoberfest
atmosphere, but Vail’s was not the same kind of big event when I attended a few
times around 2000 and hasn’t kept up with Breckenridge’s beer streetfest.