Engagement — Mike’s Perspective
I had been tossing the idea around of asking Katherine to marry me for a while, I think the idea first crossed my mind in September of 2007. It wasn’t a ’serious’ thought at that point in time, but a “I think I could spend my life with this girl” kinda thought.
As time went on the idea would pop back in my head, I’d stir on it for a little while and put it in the back of my head again. Eventually I decided it was probably right, but I needed to see a couple things happen first. 1) I needed her to move closer to me so that we could start spending more time together, without spending 3 hours in a round trip. 2) I wanted to spend an extended period of time with her, not just 1 or 2 days on the weekend. I wanted to see how well we did over a week or more.
Whether those were rational or not, its something i needed. #1 was happening, in the form of her finding a new job. As soon as it started happening, i was happy with it. #2 happened in May when Katherine went to Florida with my family for a little over a week. Needless to say, I was happy with the way the week went and found myself extremely disappointed that we’d have to go back to only seeing each other on weekends.
The week after I got back from Florida I called her sister, Libby, and asked her to give me a hand. The only thing that I knew Katherine wanted in a ring was that she wanted white gold instead of yellow. Other than that, I didn’t know what kinda stone cut, or if she even wanted a diamond. If she wanted me to pick it out or if she wanted to come pick it out. If she wanted a traditional solitaire or surrounded with other stones.
While Libby was off figuring out what Katherine wanted in a ring I spent time trying to figure out how to put together a treasure hunt for her. Katherine has a thing for treasure hunts and at one point said she’d like to do one someday. I figured this was a good time to try to pull it off … Figuring out locations and clues for a treasure hunt isn’t as easy as it sounds at first. After tossing around the idea of doing a Wheel of Time theme, and then a “important places” theme (places we liked on various dates), i decided on doing it with locations that were involved with our first date. Then i spent a long time working on the clues … rewriting the clues, rewriting the final place, and figuring out how to get her hints if she gets stuck or way off into the wrong direction. I needed more help, so i asked Libby and a friend of mine, Scott. Having 2 people in on it did 2 things for me. 1) it provided backup. if one person couldn’t be reached for some reason she could call the other. 2) I split the clues up, and told them that unless the other person wasn’t available to not provide answers for that persons clues.
Ah, its all coming together now … but how to get her out of her house. Steal her dog! I wanted to steal Spencer, cause I kinda like him. But he was on meds at the time so I took Lorelai. Of course, i then had to get her out of the house … Which meant i had to sneak out with the dog, so i decided to get started at 6am. I figured she’d get going around 7am, maybe 7:30 and she’d finally get to the last spot (coopers rock) around 11 or 12. Wow, was I wrong.
I raced out of Fairmont with the dog and called Libby. I asked her to get the ball rolling by calling Katherine so that she would find the first clue. I raced back to Morgantown, put the clues in their places then went back to my place to feed Lorelai and myself. Around 8am i decided it was time to get Lorelai back into the car and start moving again, just in case Katherine came to my place first instead of following the path of clues. I’m glad i started moving when I did because I got a call from Scott saying that she was on her way to Hibachi’s …. it wasn’t even 8am yet! What was she doing that far along!?!!
So I race over to coopers rock, found a place to setup and ran all the stuff i needed to the location and tied Lorelai up to a tree. About 20 minutes later I see Katherine pull up and go in the completely wrong direction. So, being the good person that I am, I let her go off in the wrong direction for about an hour or so. Then I called Scott and had him give Katherine a call and tell her to look closer to the cars … eventually I see her walking back down and she finds us back in the woods.
After that, it was decided that food was needed. I gave scott and jen a call to see if they wanted to join us and we went over to IHOP to celebrate. Yeah. iHop. it rocks, don’t be knocking the iHop 
Treasure Hunt Text
The attached word document is the complete text and hints for the treasure hunt.