Whiteflash-Diamond Playground

Katie - On Saturday morning Hope and I drove out to Lake Somerville (near Brenham) and rented a canoe. About a year and a half ago we had visited the island in the middle to find a geocache hidden there. Geocaches are boxes that people hide and then post the latitude and longitude of the cache on a web site so that other people can find them. It is sort of a treasure hunt for anyone with a GPS unit. Not quite as fun as taking a sighting across a dead man’s bones and them walking thirty paces like in Treasure Island, but its the same idea. The objective here isn’t the treasure but the challenge of finding it (normally).

On Friday night I told Hope that I thought it might be fun to go out to Lake Somerville since the weather would be nice. Additionally I told her that a new geocache had been placed on the Island and it might be fun to find it. Saturday morning we rowed out to the island (about thirty minutes) and attempted to find the first geocache, but we were not successful in finding the cache we had found a year ago. Then I suggested that we try to find the second cache. As we closed in on the coordinates, Hope spotted the cache and tried to open it. She asked me to help, but I told her that she had found the cache, so she should really be the one to open it. After she opened the cache she pulled out the bag inside that was full of ticket stubs from our various dates, going back to our third date and some coins from our trip to Hong Kong and Thailand. There was one additional item in the cache. I reached into the bag and pulled out a small black clam-shell box and opened it to reveal an engagement ring. On one knee I asked Hope to marry me. She said, “Oh, I should stand up,” and then she stood and accepted. I said I think there are some flowers here and then walked behind some bushes and came back with flowers in a vase. Hope was extremely suspicious of how I was managing to produce all of these things and she was having trouble believing that I would leave an engagement ring in a box on an island in the middle of a state park for several days. On Thursday I had met my brother in Bryan after he got out of his last class. We drove to Lake Somerville, rented a canoe, and rowed out to the island. Then we picked a location on the island that was far enough away from the existing geocache to not be confusing. Along the way we reviewed the details, including a signal for Cary to leave indicating that nothing had gone wrong. Cary would leave a large white rock at the boat launch indicating that he had successfully picked up a canoe. On Saturday morning Cary rowed out to the island, by himself, which took an hour because he was rowing alone and planted the ring in the cache at the agreed upon location. Cary then sat behind a bush for the next two hours with a bouquet of flowers waiting for Hope and me to get there. After I gave Hope the flowers, I took some cold Gatorade back behind the bush and gave it to Cary. Then Cary came out of his hiding spot and I explained the whole thing to Hope. - Jared & Hope, TX