2008 Mike and I met while living in Oak Harbor, WA.
Over a year later, Mike asked me out and we had our first date. After the Navy sent me to the Bay area to teach at the California Maritime Academy. Mike and I began our two year long distance relationship.
2010 On New Years Eve day Mike proposed while hiking in Cooper's Rock state park. You can ask Mike about how all well intentioned plans go awry when mother nature decides to chime in.
2011 Mike leaves on Deployment and we experience our first deployment as a couple.
2012 At the end of May I began my terminal leave and finally made it back to Oak Harbor thrilled to let my suitcases take a break from the monthly trips back and forth between Seattle and San Francisco.
And they lived happily ever after.
His story…
Picks up where she left off. After about 15 months of courtship, I realized that this was the woman I wanted to marry. Between workups, attending the weapons school and an impending deployment, the opportunities to have the dreaded talk with the Father of the Bride prior to a proper proposal were few and far between. I rolled the dice and bought the ring just prior to heading down to California for Christmas. After a week of rehearsing it in my mind (and a little liquid courage courtesy of my soon to be Father-in-law’s excellent taste in wines) we had the talk and I was given the green light. With his blessings secured it was time to shift fires to phase two: the proposal.
We proceeded due east to West Virginia to spend some time with my mom, brother, and Pap. Now, West Virginia is chocked full of beautiful places but accessibility in late December can be problematic. Cooper’s Rock State Park was no different. On New Year’s Eve Day (that’s December 31st for those of you keeping score) we ventured out to the park under the guise of a simple day hike only to discover that it was closed to vehicular traffic. The weather was clear, the sun was out and I was on a mission so I pressed onward with ZERO clue as to how far “the spot” was from that parking lot. We hiked in with rudimentary navigation (a map with no scale that was perhaps sketched by a pre-school student prior to nap time) and about 4 hours of daylight left but I was confident that the overlook was just around the next bend. Ok, it’s gotta be the next bend. I believe it’s up the next hill…etc. etc. Seeing a decrease in daylight and now a few miles back into the woods, D’ suggests that we might just back track and be out of the woods before the bears or mountain lions feast on us but I was target-fixated something fierce and had an inclination that it really was up the next hill so I stepped up the pace. As luck would have it, I was right this time (thankfully, because this was rapidly turning into one of those “I had to walk 15 miles, uphill both ways” stories and rivaling the Bataan Death March).
We reached the outlook and it was beautiful. With daylight nearly exhausted, I felt like Clark Griswold at the Grand Canyon and was impatiently waiting for her to turn her back so I could take a knee. Finally, a shiny saw mill caught her eye and I saw my opportunity so I dropped to a knee, grabbed the ring from my pocket and said “D’Marie Ellison” waited for her to turn around then asked her to marry me. She of course said yes and through the tears and runny nose it was sealed with a kiss.
