The Headwaters Trails Alliance Bikes, Beers and Blues Pub Crawl fundraiser last Friday was a huge success.
The group was encouraged to wear costumes about the Blues and showed up in everything from the Blue Man Group to every Blues Brothers character you could imagine with black ties, wild wigs and colorful boas.
The Pub Crawl group first met at the Five Mountain Tavern at the Vintage Hotel in Winter Park Resort. The Vintage was at one time a residence for resort employees but has been refurbished into a prime on-site vacation hotel, and the Tavern with its historic dark wooden bar is pretty awesome.
We hadn’t been there for many years so it was a fabulous surprise. From there, it was literally downhill on the gnarly Green Hornet Trail into the Resort village, which was bustling with activity.
We biked through the Village whooping it up… What a crazy bunch! Then we walked through the pedestrian zone past the slide and climbing wall to the new open air bar Trailblazer that had been set up in front of the West Portal. What a great location — and then it started to rain.
Even though the races were over, it was exciting to watch the downhill riders sail to the bottom of the hill. I don’t care for all the gear needed to protect oneself from the flips and rollovers that must frequently happen. I am sure glad they wear a very protective helmet. My adrenaline goes up just swinging wide accelerating in the banked turns. That kind of downhill biking is not my thing.
After a brief pause while the shower passed, we biked over to the Trademark Condos, where the Fraser River Trail started and made a beeline down the path past the back side of Winter Park Public Works and shot through the tunnel under Highway 40 into the thick woods surrounding the Idlewild Campground.
Memories flashed when our group of Moms took our 4, 5, and 6-year olds on that path teaching them to ride their oh-so-little kids bikes. We used rollerblades before they were popular to be able to help them along the way on the gentle climb up to the tunnel and then the too fast ride back down to the Beavers Lodge.
It was always fun to have a picnic on the Winter Park Resort side of the tunnel where there was a picnic table and a spot to wade in the Fraser River. The woods could be dark and scary to some of the kids, yet they always found the courage to toss the bike to the ground at this one special spot and climb up the hillside and roll back down.
Then it was out in the open again, and we zipped into Winter Park to the traffic light where HTA flaggers were directing people to cross at the light and zip down to our next stop — Volario’s — where we sipped on Sangria and summer cocktails on their delightful patio next to the Vasquez Creek.
By this time we were all feeling pretty good but things were about to get sweeter yet. The next stop was Stoked Meeting House and the Sweet Life Candy Store housed in the same building. We found fabulous ales at Stoked and an incredible array of candies and other sweets to satisfy anyone’s palate at the Candy Store.
Then it was on to the patio at Hernando’s for a final brew. Famous for its pizza and beer, it was a great place to end our crawl.
I for one needed food and it was just the place. But some people bravely marched across the street to the Pub and kept on going. What a great crew we have in the Fraser Valley! Next time, you gotta join us.