memory
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On October 12th, we were in Joshua Tree, and we stayed in the last Wagon Station available. We were supposed to camp in Joshua Tree National Park, but this was during the government shutdown, and it was closed! Matt made up an excuse about why we should have each others’ parents’ phone numbers, and he slipped away to call my dad to ask for my hand in marriage (very traditional family), he also sang along with Whitney Houston’s version of “I will always love you” to me in the Wagon Station that that night while I laughed uncontrollably.
The morning of October 14th, we had breakfast at Bob Dornberger’s Secret Restaurant before leaving town for Kingman, Arizona. Our first stop was at the Hill Top Motel to install our souvenir for our project. We participated in Documart, and we were the first couple that they “documarried.” Our Hill Top souvenir had a fortune cookie component, so we ate the fortune cookie, and our fortune said “seize from every moment its uniqueness, especially this week” so we kept that on the dashboard all week.
We set up our tents for Catherine Stebbins’ project “Desert Traces.” Matt pulled off to the side of the road as we were headed out to dinner to celebrate our one-year anniversary. He said he’d made a special souvenir for me, and pulled out a packet like the rest of the ones we had made, and it had a little vial with dried chaparral leaves in it, which I had used for one of our souvenirs. He poured the leaves into my hand, and a sparkly diamond poured out with them. It took me a minute to really process what was happening, so I didn’t hear anything he said. He was nervous because he didn’t hear me say yes. We tried to find fancy food in Kingman to celebrate, but then decided it would be way better to have Chinese food (we had eaten Chinese food on our previous visit—which is why there was a fortune cookie in the souvenir we made) so we found one with a buffet. We had egg rolls and egg drop soup and green jello, and they actually had champagne, so we toasted, and watched football and sat at the bar. On our way back to camp, we bought wine from Walgreens with plastic cups. We sat around the fire and shared wine and stories with people, and kissed and we were engaged.