My wife and I are making a yearly thing of getting away for a weekend in May to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We drop the kids off at Grandma’s house, and then treat ourselves to a relaxing trip somewhere not too far away. Last year, we went to a wonderful bed and breakfast in Wenatchee, Washington. This year, we spent two nights at the Cave-B Inn and Vineyard near George, Washington. Yes, there really is a town called George, in Washington.

This is the view of the inn, with one of its many cliff houses in the foreground. We had the room on the second floor, on the left corner.

This was the view from one of our windows, looking west towards the Columbia River.

This place is a bit pricey, especially for the suite we had, but it has a couple of things going for it.

1) It’s within 30 minutes of Grandma’s house, so by dropping the kids off there, instead of hiring a babysitter for the weekend, we save a ton of money better spent on ourselves.

2) Everything we needed for the weekend was right there. In fact, there really isn’t anything else nearby, except for The Gorge Amphitheatre, which is literally right next door. I imagine that on concert nights, the music would be quite audible from anywhere on the property.

Since I’m still not very mobile as I recover from GBS, sitting around, doing nothing was very important. It’s not actually all that different from what I have been doing at home, but for two days, my wife got to do nothing with me. And she really needed that. She did take a two hour hike down to the river on Saturday morning, a hike I hear was quite wonderful. I spent the time editing one of my novels, then watching the Food Network, which I don’t get at home.

I did splurge on myself, and had my very first, real massage. I’ve been to the chiropractor hundreds of times in my life, but never had a true massage. It was quite a pleasant experience, and one I will will probably treat myself to again in the future. They also had 7 head showers in the Spa Building that were absolutely amazing.

The food was pretty good, but I really wish I could have tried the wine. Since I am still in recovery mode, I didn’t want to do anything that would set me back even a little bit. The food cried out for a little of the vino, and I was sad that I couldn’t oblige.

The only real problem I encountered all weekend was that in the suite we were in—which was right over the dining room—we could hear the jazz playing on the speakers below us. It wasn’t a problem during the day, but at night, the thump of the stand-up bass reverberated through the bed. I finally had to go down to the lobby at 2 AM to get the night porter to turn it off. I couldn’t sleep at all. On the second night, we called down at 11:30 PM, and I slept much better. I can honestly say, I have never hated jazz as much as I did at 1:45 AM Saturday morning.

Overall, it was a good time, and something we’ll definitely do again. Next time, we’ll check out one of the cliff houses, or maybe one of the Yurts. And hopefully, I’ll be healthy enough to go on that hike too.