Oktoberfest Season

Late September and early October hosts a number of Oktoberfest events here in the Northwest.  The list includes the Fremont Oktoberfest, the Anacortes Oktoberfest, Oktoberfest Northwest, and the grand daddy of them all the Leavenworth Oktoberfest. I also include on the list Elysian's Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. There are so many that you really can't get to them all, but I am giving it a good try this year.

We started with the Fremont Oktoberfest last weekend. My brother was walking in the 5K, so we went down early so he could do that. True to the nature of Fremont, they had a "Beer Belly" division for heavier folks. The main advantage of which was to get a bit of a head start over the rest of the crowd. Being a fatbody I don't attend many races so I was a bit surprised at the number of people that showed up to run the course in costume. There were a lot of guys wearing lederhosen and girls in dirndls (mini-skirt versions anyway). Plus a few kegs and even a couple of guys dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2.  My brother beat his prior best time on a 5K.  Next year I may have to give it a go myself.

The Oktoberfest itself was pretty standard beer festival.  There were a few tents with German beer, but most of it was local stuff.  There was some interesting things too, but since we were there on Sunday there were a few things I was looking forward to that were out when we got to the booth.

This week we did the Leavenworth Oktoberfest.  Leavenworth Washington is a town up in the Cascades that converted itself into an open air Bavarian Kitsch-fest to bring in tourists.  As you may have guessed Oktoberfest is a something they embrace fully.  Unlike some of the other fests around here, the Leavenworth fest is more family friendly.  There is a lot of beer, but there are also several bands, food booths, and crafts as well.  We got up there early since we were not going to stay the night.  We did more than our fair share of drinking and had a pretty good time.  We also stopped off at King Ludwig's Restaurant for dinner. I had the Schweinshax'n, which is a roasted pork hock with all the trimmings.  Crispy roasted pork skin is one of the best things to eat in the universe and you get plenty of that plus nice juicy / fatty pork.  My brother had the Leberkasse, which is a meatloaf type thing that was pretty good too.

Next week we are going to hit the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival and Oktoberfest Northwest.  I will report back on those probably on Monday depending on how early we get back from Puyallup.