CAMANO ISLAND — Sharon and Arthur DeLavallade weren’t looking for love when they met each other three years ago at a gas station convenience store on Camano Island.
Both were over 50. Arthur didn’t want to be tied down, and Sharon didn’t want to get hurt again.
And then he walked into the convenience store she manages.
“It just seemed like we had known each other for a very long time,” she said.
“He’s always joyful and happy,” said Sharon, 64, whose maiden name is Kelley.
And “she’s just the nicest woman on the island,” Arthur, 57, said.
No one has ever made him feel the way he does when she’s around.
After dating for a couple years, he told Sharon’s two grown boys that he wanted to marry their mother. They gave him their blessings. He proposed on Christmas Eve.
“He got down on his knee just like the old days, and asked me to marry him,” she said.
The couple soon started talking about wedding plans, Arthur said. As a joke, “I said, ‘Let’s get married on the zipline’” — Canopy Tours Northwest, which is across the street from the Texaco station.
“A few days later, I had 30 people asking me, ‘When are we getting married on the zipline?’” he said.
Neither is a daredevil. And Sharon is scared of heights.
But they took the plunge Saturday morning at the Canopy Tours NW.
The wedding ceremony was split up between the course’s six sections. A minister, Arthur’s best man and Sharon’s maid of honor joined the couple as they zipped down the steel cables between platforms.
Loose clothing isn’t allowed on the course. “That killed the veil and wedding dress,” he said.
So, they wore tie-dyed T-shirts and safety helmets — not your typical wedding outfits.
“There’s nothing normal about this wedding,” Arthur said and laughed.
He’s black, she’s white. Both are on the other side of middle age.
But the pair had smiles as wide and bright as any newlywed could when they came out of the trees to a clearing where family members and friends were waiting.
It was a first for Canopy Tours NW, which opened in 2011, said Mona Campbell, the outfit’s marketing director. “We’ve had a vow renewal on the course and several proposals.” It even saw an Oak Harbor woman celebrate her 97th birthday on a zipline there. But no weddings before Saturday.
The zipline course might be new, but her family has been working the land since 1912, when her great-grandparents, Alfred and Alberta Kristoferson started his farm there.
Kristoferson Farm is still running today. It produces organic hay and lavender. Campbell and several other family members run the farm and the zip line course.
Like many family farms, it has had to reinvent itself to stay afloat.
Canopy Tours NW has been a big success, and has about 10,000 guests a year, she said. Its six lines range in length from 150 to 660 feet, and are as much as 60 feet off the ground. There are interpretive displays along the way, so visitors can better connect with the surroundings, she said.
“Our property is so beautiful, and we want to share it with the community,” Campbell said. “This has been a great way to do that and sustain it.”
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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