Like The Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, or the original Star Wars, there’s no denying good things come in threes. When it was my turn to plan our Valentine’s Day festivities this year, I decided to follow suit and create a three-pronged celebration over weeks. Was it as epic as taking a malevolent hunk of jewelry over and beneath mountains, through cursed marshes, and into shadowy woodlands in order to dissolve it in a fiery volcano under the lidless watch of an undying Dark Lord? I’ll let you decide.

Part I: Globes and Sprouts

First, I reserved a private alpen globe at Franck’s Restaurant. We got to enjoy Franck’s American cuisine in a slightly chilly, shimmering glass sphere. Everything was tasty but the Brussels sprouts I could eat every meal. Really.

Part II: Candlelight and Cardiovascular

The next weekend, we headed to Nordic Nights, an evening snowshoeing event at Solitude Resort. After stopping at Silver Fork Restaurant on the way to purchase a trough of nachos, we were ready to hit the trail about 7:00. However, we didn’t get going until almost half an hour later due to congestion at the ticket stations. We sure were glad we at least didn’t have to rent snowshoes as the rental line was insanely long and chaotic. Who knew people would like roaming around a snowy mountainside under the light of a full moon on trails lined by twinkling candles? Okay, yup, on second thought that sounds like it would be pretty popular.

The Silver Lake Loop was the only path lit up, so, in the interest of not getting lost, we stuck to it. We completed the loop three times before the Nordic & Snowshoe Center closed at 9:00, which equaled just under 1.9 miles of snowshoeing. Our first circle was less enchanting than later ones. Between the hundreds of candles winding through the trees and the lemon-shaped moon, it would have been magical if it weren’t for the people. The crowds deprived it of its charm the first two-thirds of that loop. These weren’t your regular, considerate trail travelers; these were oblivious roamers who didn’t react appropriately when faster shoers were behind them, which made them a bit aggravating. The masses thinned drastically after that, and enchantment saturated the experience. I guess everyone else was happy to snowshoe for 15 minutes and then drink hot chocolate for an hour.

With the annoyance of the discourteous removed, we didn’t want to stop. We went around the loop a second time and then a third seeing only a scattering of others. It could have been nastily cold, as it has been on the other occasions we’ve snowshoed at night, but global warming had our backs. Temperatures had peaked down in the valleys at over 50 degrees earlier that day, and it was still 23 degrees at the resort when we finished just after 9:00. We were uncomfortable initially with angry hands, but once we warmed up, we stayed warm. I only had to wear my snowboarding coat and one under layer. I hate global warming, but occasionally I suppose it’s mildly convenient.

Part III: Pasta and Nostalgia

For the final episode in our Valentine’s Day trilogy, I made dinner for the two of us, and we had a quiet night in. Our meal consisted of cremini carpaccio and pappardelle in saffron cream sauce. Dessert was pineapple, biscotti, and bananas dipped in amaretto chocolate fondue. Jason assisted a bit with the prep by washing a few dishes and veggies, but I made everything as he wasn’t supposed to be helping at all.

Afterward, we put together a Sixteen Candles puzzle while watching the nostalgic 1984 classic. The behavior of high schoolers hasn’t changed much over 40 years, though some of the antics in that show would be considered much less PC now. My biggest problem with this movie has always been that Jake Ryan isn’t very likeable. He’s cheating on his girlfriend and pawning off the responsibility of driving her inebriated form home on other boys while instructing them to “have fun.” He’s got nothing on Duckie.

The best things come in trilogy form. Search no further for evidence than Look Who’s Talking, The Mighty Ducks, and Valentine’s Day 2022.