"Not even," she joked back. They sipped at cups of hot tea as the fire crackled invitingly in front of them.
"Um, Becky?" Joe asked. She turned to look at him. He reached into his front pocket and pulled out two plain gold bands. They glowed softly in the firelight, sparkling as they caught and reflected the flames. He took her hand. "I hope this fits," he said huskily. "I wasn't sure about the size, so I kind of guessed." He shrugged his shoulders looking embarrassed as he slipped one of the golden bands on her finger. It was a little loose, he noticed, as he slipped it over the knuckle of her ring finger. He looked up into her eyes and saw tears that matched his own. She reached out, taking the other band from his fingers, and slipped it onto his finger. The fit was better this time, but he had tried several different sizes in the small shop, and had picked the one that fit him best.
"I can't believe you thought of this," she said softly. "It's beautiful."
"Don't go getting all sappy on me, Becky," he said, although in truth he had more tears leaking from his eyes than she did. "I just, well... I guess I just wanted you to have something there to remind you. Not even that really, it's just sort of tradition," he finished lamely.
"You're the one who's getting all sappy," she replied, "are you still going to be this romantic in ten years?"
"Yes, I guess, I... yes. I love you, and so, yes I will. I've never been the sort of guy you could consider romantic. I used to hate reading sappy books even, you know, like romance novels? But I guess love can change that, Becky, for me at least."
They held each other without speaking, and after a while they crawled into the tent and went to sleep. Joe had zippered the two sleeping bags together, and they cuddled close together as they slept. Not so much for warmth as for the closeness.
They were at the edge of the Bitterroot Mountain range, and it was somewhat cooler at the higher elevation. They had both remarked though, on how much warmer it was than it should have been. Becky more so than Joe.
"Usually," she had told him, "at this time of year," although it was still only June, "the nights were colder. Sometimes the temperatures would dip down to the forties, especially at higher elevations."
Joe had done his best to explain the why of the warmer weather to her, and had managed to make her partially understand.
"Does that mean the polar ice caps will melt?" she had asked.
"They already are," he had replied, "but, they'll re-form. Just in a different place, I guess."
In the morning they broke camp before the sun was even up and headed out into the warm pre-morning air.
They both enjoyed the scenery as they drove along, and verbally promised that they would take their time when they returned, and stop as often as they wanted to, to look at the scenic mountains.
They both knew it was possible that they might never return. That they could die in the north when they reached whatever destiny awaited them there, but they chose not to dwell on it, as they found it only saddened them.
As they traveled, they encountered less and less stalled traffic, until the road before them opened up, totally deserted for miles at a stretch. Mid-morning brought them to the Idaho border, and if they had not had to slow down and find an alternate route around the City of Boise, they probably would have traversed the state and entered Utah by nightfall.
The stalled traffic had returned several miles outside the city, but once they were within two miles of the city limits, it had become impassable. Even the breakdown lanes were packed full, and the traffic had forced them into the fields that flanked the highway to find a way around. Once past Boise however, the stalled traffic had once again given way and they spent the night camped beside the highway less than twenty miles from the Utah border.
Noon of the following day brought them to the outskirts of Salt Lake City and more stalled traffic. After taking several shortcuts across open fields, they eventually came upon route 80, which, Joe found by checking the map; they could follow most of the way across the country. Joe knew, although he had not seen it with his own eyes, that their trip would become complicated somewhere just inside what was left of the state of Iowa. From there they would have to find some sort of a boat if they intended to finish the rest of their trip. There would still be a long distance to travel once they reached the other side of the great river that, Joe knew, now flowed across the country effectively cutting it in two.
They spent that night by a quiet lake that reminded them of the one back in Washington. They were now in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, just outside the small town of Wamsutter. They were both becoming used to the traveling, and had each developed a routine they followed every night when they stopped. They had twice seen smoke off in the distance that day, as if to the east of them some great fire were burning. They had correctly guessed the reason long before they reached the fire. Someone, or something, had set the entire city to flame.
For several miles before they reached and successfully passed around and beyond the city of Rock Springs, black oily smoke had hung over them in the sky. They had been forced to detour more than twenty miles to the south
