Editor's Note: Shawn and Joanne's story is the first in a recurring series of articles featuring couples who have found more than geocaches together; they've found true love.

It was important to me that my proposal be both unique and a total surprise. I had considered popping the question in a fancy restaurant where there were sure to be many people to cheer, but that would register heavy on Joanne's "something' up" radar and it just wasn't my style. No, I needed something better. Then one day as I was jogging it hit me...

As you might have guessed by now, geocaching plays an important role in my proposal. You see, back in the spring, Joanne and I started geocaching and we enjoyed it. So, I decided to use geocaching as a cover! A perfect plan, I thought; not only would it be a totally unique way of proposing, but it would easily slip under Joanne's radar, ensuring a total surprise!

So, a few weeks ago I asked Joanne if she'd like to go geocaching at the end of the month since I had time off from work. I also mentioned that we should take time to have a picnic in the park. She agreed that it was a good idea and we made plans to do it on Monday. Fortunately, Joanne had to work that morning, which gave me plenty of time to set things up at the park. It was a beautiful sunny day out; a perfect day for a proposal. Soon after I finished setting up, it was time to meet Joanne and head off to Wawa for some picnic supplies (hey, a bottle of champagne isn't exactly standard picnic fare, but I did consider hiding a bottle in the bushes). By this time, I was very excited and trying hard not to show it.

I had placed the first (and only) clue in an evergreen tree just off to the side of a grassy path. Earlier, I took an empty chap stick container and glued a pine cone around it. I put the clue inside and hung it from the tree. It was a blast watching Joanne hunt for this clue. Of course, she had no idea what she was looking for, whereas I knew exactly what to look for and its location. I tried to lead her into the right direction but without giving too much away, lest she get suspicious. "Maybe in the branches?", I said. So, she'd look in the branches for a few seconds and then return to poking at the ground with a stick, trying to chase out the clue. "You start on that side looking at the branches, I'll start on this side," I said, hoping to push her towards the clue. After a few minutes of searching the branches, Joanne found the fake pine cone and screamed, "I found it!" She was as excited finding that silly pine cone as I thought she'd be to get the ring. She then teased me about finding the clue before I did and that it was a good thing that she was here to find all of the clues for me. I let her get ahead of me as we walked so she wouldn't see me smiling from ear to ear.

At this point, I convinced her that we should set up the picnic and eat now since we were both hungry, and look for the next clue afterwards. It was a good thing that she agreed since there was no other clue. You see, it was my plan to surprise her during the picnic by working out the puzzle key and having her solve the puzzle there, while we were sharing a private moment. Lucky for me, it went even smoother than I had hoped. Joanne was eager to solve the puzzle and started guessing what the message could be even before we started eating. This worked in my favor, as I pretended to rack my brain as to what the key could be. By the time we finished eating I was ready. I "suddenly" remembered how I read about this old way of encoding messages on the Internet where you would take the alphabet and rotate it by 13 letters. Now, coming from anyone else this might be an odd thing for a person to "suddenly remember", but if you know me, it's not that unusual. So, I had Joanne write down the first 13 letters of the alphabet and then the next 13 letters right below it, like so:

With this, she began to decode the message:

W-I-L-L    Y-O-U    M-A-R-R...-Y

...at that she spun around to see me on one knee with a ring in my hand as I asked, "Joanne, will you marry me?" She flipped out. She must have said "Oh my God" a hundred times before I reminded her that a "yes" or "no" would work, to which she replied, "yes, yes, yes, yes!" I slid the ring on her finger and then she gave me a hug that the jaws of life could not have pried apart. We hugged for a while longer, she shed a few more tears, and she screamed out loud a few more times - which I'm sure freaked out a few squirrels.

I think she was in shock for the next few hours as we made a trip to her mom's house to tell her family and make calls to tell her friends. I couldn't have asked for the whole thing to go better than it did - it was unique, it was original, and it was a surprise. More importantly, however, is that Joanne wants to be my wife, and as much fun as this was to pull off, in the end that's all I wanted.