The Engagement
James and I had talked about marriage sporadically throughout the 5 years we had been together before he asked. We'd make up funny dates to get married, talk about throwing a surprise wedding, eloping in the mountains, but at the end of the day it was just kind of a laugh.
We woke up a warm Saturday morning after glamping outside of Missoula, MT. A first-time experience for the both of us. We had planned a weekend traveling down to Butte to attend the International Folk Festival and stopping along the way, checking out different places. I know, folk festival? Well it's this huge event that Butte, America (historic slang, look it up) puts on each year that features folk bands from around the world! Who would of thought Montana was so cultured, right? Along the way we had planned to stop and "glamp" outside of Missoula and then proceed to Butte taking the scenic route. Stopping in historic Philipsburg to do some mountain biking, sapphire mining, try their brewery, and just checking things out since neither of us had ever been there.
We arrived in Philipsburg around 9am Saturday morning. We discovered that things move a little slower in rural Montana. Most stores were still opening, or closed on Saturdays. Luckily, we had found the only coffee place in town open that morning. After finishing our six dollar breakfast and getting our coffees to go we began wondering around Philipsburg eagerly looking for things to do before the brewery opened at eleven :). The only thing we found was the Philipsburg salvation army and man was I stoked. James on the other hand, not so much. We looked around the store, looking at all the knicks and knacks and out of the corner of my eye I saw something that resembled a white ostrich performing in a Las Vegas show. I walked over and pulled the wedding dress off the rack and ran over to James laughing and said, "I'll marry you right now, if I can wear this". James seemed confused and hesitated for a second and then gave me a grin and stuttered a firm "no" at me. Awkwardly I replied back, "I'm joking." And put the dress back. This was the first of several times that I'd bring up marriage that day. Which looking back now, is so weird. But hey, a woman's intuition.
We continued over to the brewery since it was finally 11am and had ourselves a beer. The Philipsburg brewery was cute and quaint and full. We gulped down our first one and began looking up places to go sapphire mining and how to get to the local mountain biking hill. Half way through our second one, I told James how neat it would be to have your own beer personally brewed for your wedding. He looked over at me again with this confused look and said, "yeah sure". I began going into detail of all the names you could call it, and again James not really entertaining the idea. So I dropped it. And yes, I know what you're thinking but unfortunately and maybe fortunately we won't have our own personally brewed beer at the wedding.
Philipsburg is known in Montana for two things: sapphires and Discovery Mountain. We left the brewery with hopes of conquering both since that's mainly what we came here to do - sapphire mining and mountain biking. We walked into a shop and told the lady at the front desk that we wanted to mine sapphires, and it's not as romantic as one would think. You literally buy a bag dirt, proceed outside, sit at a pick nick table and start sifting through your bag of $50 dirt. James and I begin sifting through the dirt like children, just so excited and hopeful that we'd find something dazzling. With every sapphire that I pulled out of the dusty dirt I mentioned (in a joking manner) how nice it would look on an engagement ring. James again mumbling and shaking his head at my third wedding comment that day. Although we didn't find a Diana sized yogo sapphire we were hoping for, we did find a few tiny ones that we still have till this day.
After striking it rich at the sapphire sand box we continued on with the rest of our trip. Discovery mountain was a good thirty-minute drive south of town. We had the random directions from locals and a screenshot of a map from google from when we last had cell service to get us there. We eventually ended up on a dirt road for 20 minutes until we came to gate that was locked and said "ski hill closed for the season". With the spotty service we had we tried to recalculate where we went wrong. We knew that there was in fact lift access mountain biking on Discovery mountain but we came to find out was that we ended up on the wrong side of the mountain. Saddened about no mountain biking we decided we would just take a swim in Georgetown lake that we had just passed before continuing on to Butte.
We arrived at the lake and changed from our mountain biking clothes into our swimsuits. Took a little swim and we were lounging out and I believe talking about sapphires, again. And as I was looking out at the lake James comes over and kneels down and says, " well sweetie, it's no sapphire" and opens up the box and asks me to marry him. I was shocked, trying not to tear up, I said, "yes".