Forty-five years ago, Dianne and I decided to legalize our cohabitation lifestyle and actually get married.
To celebrate the most current anniversary of that wonderful event, I planned to fly my wife of 45 years to Bora Bora for some romance in the sun and surf.
Unfortunately, my lovely wife had an important online Zoom meeting to attend, so we reluctantly decided to forgo our trip to French Polynesia and instead just enjoy a getaway weekend in beautiful Palisade, Colorado.
I booked a patio-king room at the Wine Country Inn, one of our favorite Colorado hotels whose first name doesn’t start with Ritz Carlton or Four Seasons.
Dinner that evening was to be at Pêche Restaurant in Palisade. The place has a reputation for being one of the best and priciest restaurants (the cheapest red wine is $90 a bottle) in the Grand Valley, and we were excited to be dining there. While the prices suggest opulence, the indoor seating had the romantic ambiance of the neighborhood iHop with tables and chairs occupying open rows in one large dining room. The noise reverberating off the walls was so loud (amplified by a well lubricated birthday group of 25-person birthday party seated in the center of the room) Dianne and I had to shout across the table to be heard.
There would be no $90 wine there for us. We bailed, drove back to the Wine Country Inn and had dinner in Caroline’s where the meal was delicious and the wine was a mere $48 a bottle.
On Saturday, we hit the streets. Our first destination was the Blue Pig Gallery where some friends of ours sell their dramatic landscape photos.
Then we walked a couple of doors down to Fidel’s Cocina and Bar, a Mexican restaurant owned by the same folks who opened an Italian restaurant in Fruita. We just had some chips and three different types of dips – black bean hummus, toasted pepita and, of course, guacamole.
We had a bit of time to kill before Dianne’s Zoom meeting, so we drove the Palisade Fruit and Wine Byway, a collection of roads looping around nearby orchards, vineyards and wineries. We stopped at the Palisade Pie Shop…
…for some delicious peach pie served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
After the Zoom meeting was over, we headed over to Carboy Winery where we had coupons for a free glass of wine each.
Next stop was to head up the hill to the Bookcliff Vineyards tasting room for Sunset Saturday, a weekly event featuring a local musician or band, food from a local food truck and, of course, Bookcliff wine. The musician (Gerry Goodman) was entertaining.
The food truck (Ciao Baby) offered some tasty pizza…
…and the Bookcliff wine was, of course, delicious.
Sunday is Farmers’ Market day in Palisade with dozens and dozens of “farmers” vending everything from fruits and vegetables to crafts and clothing. We confined our purchases to lettuce, sourdough bread and a bottle of green chili salsa.
Then the rain came down. We stashed our purchases in the car and headed over to Fidel’s for sustenance.
On the way out of town, we stopped to pick up a half-box of peaches from some growers with whom Dianne was familiar.
A few miles later we bought some melons that a Mexican friend of Dianne’s imported from Green River, Utah.
It was then time to hit the road for the long 23-mile drive back to beautiful Fruita.