Winefest Bike Tour/Anniversary Celebration

I suppose it's a little late, but we thought it would be fun to share a few photos of our anniversary celebration at Two Rivers Winery during Winefest in Grand Junction in September.

We pre-ordered a mini anniversary cake from our wedding cake baker, complete with local Palisade-peach filling (to replicate the top tier of our wedding cake). We stopped at a local grocery store for hors d'oevres (two cheeses, crackers, French bread, Spanish olives, antipasto, and prosciutto), which ended up being the perfect though unplanned dinner...

And spent the evening on the terrace...

Enjoying our goodies, a bottle of Two Rivers wine (okay, make that three bottles! Icy cold Chardonnay to start, a spicy Syrah, and then a bold Cabernet to cap off the evening)...

And watched the sun go down over the vineyards.

The next morning, we were up and on our bikes well before sunrise for a 25-mile ride through the vineyards and orchards (peaches, plums, pears, apricots, apples, and honey) of Palisade.

This was definitely a highlight! A must-do for future Winefest visits. The tour included a stop at a winery for slices of fresh peaches and other assorted refreshments midway.

Afterward, we headed to a wine-tasting festival in the park, and then another highlight, the piece de resistance: A seven-course winemaker's dinner at Two Rivers catered by the Cowboy and the Rose (who catered our wedding), including a savory northern bean soup, a crab-and-mango salad, a lemon sorbet intermezzo, sea bass, quail, and bison tenderloin, capped off with raspberry-white chocolate mousse wrapped in lady fingers -- all absolutely outstanding, and truly taking us back to where it all began, with our first trip to Winefest in 2005, planting the seeds back then that this was where we might want to get married and this was what we wanted to replicate for our wedding.

Thank you again, Grammy and Papa, for taking such excellent care of Blanden on our little getaway. And thank you, Jim and Nancy, for loaning us the bike rack and making one of the highlights of our trip possible.