Presidents’ Day brought beautiful weather, reasonably sane traffic and very happy snow play visitors from as far away as Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Local businesses were happy too.

Reported by Pam Sturdevant

Andrea Geike, co-owner of Mike’s Pizza in Lake of the Woods, had good news about the long weekend snow play business: “It was wonderful. Everyone was happy. We had people parking in the back of the restaurant in the dirt lot and there was no trash left behind. We did have trash cans out for the people. Some people waited an hour to two for their food. We even got 40 hits on ‘Yelp’ saying how good the food is at Mike’s. If we could do this well every week, it would be great for business.”

“It was really busy on Sunday,” Manual Leon of La Leña Restaurant in Pine Mountain said. “Some people had to wait 20 minutes or so and people were waiting outside. We had no problems and everyone was happy.”

Chef Ron Vasquez of Pine Mountain Roadhouse agreed: “We did real good on Sunday and President’s Day. Everything went smoothly. It was great.”

John Cavey Jr. of Caveman Cavey’s in Frazier Park reports, “Monday was really good, the best day. A lot of people were sitting in the restaurant. Everything went great. We have the pros working here.” Over at Big John’s, owner Frank Davies reports, “We did great on Sunday and Monday— a lot of customers. We were very happy. We even extended our hours. We did not turn any customers away. We stayed open after 4:30 p.m. on Sunday and after 3:30 p.m. on Monday.”

Kathy Parker of Alpine Lumber & Mercantile got customers buying sleds, snow chains and adventure passes. Harry Spyrka of Ace Hardware said they sold some snow items on Saturday and Sunday, but Monday was slow.

Peter Bogdanoff said there was no impact from snow visitors at Chatterpillar Toys & Gifts this weekend.

This is part of the February 25, 2011 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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