GEORGETOWN, Colo. (KDVR) — Thousands of cars and people were in Georgetown to catch a glimpse of the leaves changing colors in the high country.
“I mean, it looked so beautiful that we had to come. Yeah, for sure. I think like with the railroad being here and like all these hikes around and it being just off I-70, it’s like the access is really easy and the views are obviously, you know, to die for,” said Morgan Groninger, a visitor of Georgetown.
One of the biggest days of high traffic due to fall foliage did not go out without a hitch. As Amanda Cooper, co-owner of Cooper’s on the Creek, told FOX31 the power went out right as doors were opening.
“On these weekends we’re averaging like 15,000 to 20,000 vehicles a day,” said Cooper.
According to Xcel Energy, Cooper’s on the Creek was just one of the over 2,200 people or businesses left without power for hours on Saturday.
“Not today. Any day but today. It was obviously not a great situation,” Cooper said.
Customers in the dark, Cooper did what she could to provide people with what they had in the middle of their lunch rush.
“We let people come in, fill up water bottles. We served draft beer until our draft beer system went out. We had a little bit of like chips and dip available for a couple tables till that ran out. And then we just kind of winged it,” Cooper said.
Cooper told FOX31 that despite the power issues, she wanted people to experience all Georgetown has to offer.
“I mean, we feel bad for people. It’s hard. You want people to have a hospital experience, and we didn’t have a lot to offer, but what we could offer, we were happy to,” Cooper said.
Vito Maretski told FOX31 he was trying to make light of the situation after driving over an hour to experience the leaves changing color, as his family just wanted to stop for some ice cream in town.
“The thing that affected me the most was it was dark in there. How am I supposed to choose my ice cream flavor? There’s dozens of flavors and I can’t see which one,” Maretski said.
The power was out for about 4 hours during the day. A spokesperson with Xcel Energy told FOX31 that an equipment failure at a substation is what caused the outage.
Anthony Sutton is a business strategist and writer with a passion for management, leadership, and entrepreneurship. With years of experience in the corporate world, he shares insights on business growth, strategy, and innovation through management-opleiding.org.
