Show Notes
There’s a lot of love for Wisconsin’s state parks. In honor of Valentine’s Day, visitors share their Wisconsin State Park love stories about first dates, surprise engagements and scenic wedding days. Listen in to hear how their special day is something they’ll remember forever.
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TRANSCRIPT
Announcer: [
00:00:00] Welcome to Wisconsin DNRs Wild Wisconsin - Off the Record podcast, information straight from the source.
Katie Grant: [
00:00:12] Welcome back to another episode of Wild Wisconsin - Off the Record, I'm your host, DNRs digital media coordinator, Katie Grant. When I started my job here at Wisconsin DNR, one of the first fun facts I learned was that you could get married in a state park.
I had no idea that was even a possibility, let alone something that people actually did. I let the fact leave my brain until this last summer when I interviewed Jane Simkins and Missy Vanlanduyt for Episode 42 - How Do You OutWiGo? On that episode, Jane said, "people use parks as a platform to sort of bring people together." A short conversation about the opportunities to use state parks for your wedding ensued, and that got us thinking, what sort of a role have state parks played in your love stories? We put that question on a shelf until now. In honor of Valentine's Day next week, we asked for your state park love stories, whether you went on a first date at a state park, got engaged or married at one or anything else in between, and we got you guys to tell us them in your own words.
Now I'm a bit of a nerd about Valentine's Day. It's been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember, and I've definitely driven my friends crazy with how much I like to celebrate it. So, to say I've had fun reading and listening to your stories is a bit of an understatement. Sit back and listen in as we hear from our listeners about how state parks have played a role in their lives.
Zach: [
00:01:46] And, uh, our story begins like many others on the dating app, Bumble. I, uh, didn't have very good dates before, so I wanted to find a, uh, a line that would, um, align people with more my interests of the outdoors and, uh, geology. So I added, 'you don't know High Cliff State Park unless you've seen the stromatolites.'
And once I put this line on, I was going through people's profiles and I come across Erika. And Erika, we went to high school together and we went to middle school together and I had a big crush on her. So I, you know, swipe on her and we matched. 'OK! Yes. Great.' And we, I wait about a day, and on Bumble you have 24 hours to, uh, Erika needs to talk to me.
So I'm like, 'well, come on, is she gonna do this?' And at the last minute she messages, so where are these stromatolites? And, of course I'm gonna hold off on this or that. Uh, nah, I'm not going to tell her these locations so I can show her on a date. I invite her two days later to go get drinks. And, uh, she says, no.
Well, OK. She doesn't really say no, but she doesn't... she ignores me for two more days and I'm like, 'OK, if she answered the line on the first place, and like, stromatolites, uh, this has got to work.' So I invite her to go on a hike to High Cliff State Park, and she says, yes. So, it's a Friday night. It looks like there's rain in the forecast, but I think it's going to be clear and we start on our hike.
Erika: [
00:03:25] All right, so we're hiking along, and I'm promised that I'm going to see these stromatolites and it starts to rain a little harder. And I'm wondering where these things are. Wondering if maybe he's made these up just to get me on a date.
Zach: [
00:03:39] Oh yeah, I definitely did.
Erika: [
00:03:41] But eventually, he brings me to the site of the elusive stromatolites, and he gets down on the ground and he points to a mound of rock, and I look at his face and his eyes are so lit up, and I just am like 'what? That's it? This mound of rock on the ground, all this hype for this pile of rock.'
Zach: [
00:04:04] She definitely had that look in her eyes. I'm like, no, these are really cool.
Erika: [
00:04:08] But he was super excited about it, so I got super excited about it too. And then we finished our hike and we went to the top of the tower and at this point we were both soaking wet and it was getting cold. And then it got dark and we talked for a long time.
Zach: [
00:04:25] And we've been going to state parks ever since. Woo! State parks.
Ellen: [
00:04:37] And we're from Madison, Wisconsin. And our state park love story started when I was a really little girl. I would go camping at Governor Dodge State Park every summer with my family. We would go there multiple times each summer and just swim and camp, and it became really part of who I was as a person.
So growing up when I started dating Cole, um, it was definitely one of our most common date spots is that I would take him there and we would eat lunch and swim, and go for hikes at Governor Dodge State Park.
Cole: [
00:05:13] Yeah, and there was this, on one of the trails, there's one of these, um, cliffs off to the side of it that we would go to.
And when we went to the cliff, then I was like, yup, this is, this is going to be the spot one day. Years later, you know, on the day that that I ended up proposing, we, we drove to ... to Governor Dodge. It was a Sunday and the weather was terrible. It was pouring rain.
Ellen: [
00:05:40] And he really wanted to go hiking up to the cliff and I was getting a little grumpy. I was like, 'why are we going to this cliff?'
Cole: [
00:05:47] Yep, it didn't make any sense probably, but I was on a mission and the rain held off long enough. And, um, we ended up going up to the cliff with, uh, her sister and brother in law. And, um, you know, I asked her to marry me there and then when we did it, you know ... she is, she was going crazy.
And, uh, and then we...
Ellen: [
00:06:12] It was perfect. It was right at our spot at Governor Dodge. And then, yeah. And then we walked down and he had surprised me with the rest of our family waiting in the shelter, also in the rain.
Cole: [
00:06:22] Yep, they're all waiting, and she was super surprised.
Ellen: [
00:06:25] It was a great day and a perfect location.
Emily: [
00:06:40] And uh, we have a state park love story for sure. Um, where our relationship started where we really weren't supposed to be together. When you look back at, uh, at our own personal plans. So it was only a few months really that we were together and we both kinda knew we needed to be together.
Nick: [
00:06:58] We would go up skiing at Granite Peak all the time. We would go up to the top or a mountain, state park, and just look out over the city of Wausau and see how beautiful things were. Um, we knew we wanted to be together and, um, as we started to talk about our life together, um, we knew that Rib Mountain State Park was definitely the place that we wanted to get married.
We started looking into it and there were just, there were so many options out there, but we knew Rib Mountain State Park was the place that we had to get married.
Emily: [
00:07:31] Yeah. But it's, of course, before we get married, we've got to have that proposal. So, um, I work in television and, uh, we were doing something called a promo.
Um, someone, my ... my boss was saying, 'hey, you gotta go up there and we're going to just, you know, ask you about a few questions and have this beautiful backdrop, uh, of, you know, Wausau area, um, from the top of Rib Mountain.
Nick: [
00:07:56] So worked out perfect because her boss, um, allowed her, uh, was in on this the whole time and, um, allowed her to do the promo there.
So what I did is I hid behind the rocks. Um, had a photographer kind of hiding a little bit, pretend like she was taking pictures of the mountain and the city. And Emily came down with her promo guy and started, uh, talking.
Emily: [
00:08:21] Yeah. "Why? Why do you love journalism?" And so I started to say that, and it was a little windy, not like crazy windy, just light breeze.
And I was just very focused on the job that I needed to do. But then I heard some shuffling shoes behind me and I was terrified.
Nick: [
00:08:38] Turned around, and little did she know her handsome man was standing right behind her.
Emily: [
00:08:43] And then it was just water works. I knew exactly why he was there.
Nick: [
00:08:47] It was a beautiful day.
Um, it was actually raining earlier in the day. Um, and it stopped. The sun started coming out after I proposed. And, um, we took a lot of pictures up at Rib Mountain. Uh, it was very, very beautiful. Y
Emily: [
00:08:58] Yeah. But we knew we wanted to get married up there then, too. So, Bill at the Rib Mountain State Park, he is just awesome. Um, he checked in, you know, we would check in with him and he said, "Yep. You know, there, there's a few other people that are looking at your date, August 11th, 2018. Um, but, you know, we'll, I'll keep you posted." And, uh, we were just waiting in anticipation, you know, the two weeks, uh, you know, after we put in our application. And I get a call from Bill and Bill's like, "Emily, I have some good news for you, and I was just in my newsroom and just started to freak out. I was like, "Oh my gosh. We did it."
Emily: [
00:09:38] So I'm sorry for anyone else who was waiting for August 11th, 2018 but, uh, we got that.
Nick: [
00:09:45] Then the day finally came, the weather was perfect. I mean, couldn't, couldn't be any better. Um.
Emily: [
00:09:52] And accommodated all our friends and family. The weather, yeah again, was beautiful. Beautiful pictures. And just exactly the environment that we wanted to be in and where our love grew. State parks are just definitely a special place and will always hold a special place in our relationship, too.
Polly: [
00:10:12] A lifelong love born at Peninsula State Park, by Bob and Polly Kuehn of Door County, Wisconsin. It was January 29th, 1986. I was newly single and had heard about the moonlight ski to be held at Peninsula park. I felt compelled to go and asked the only friend I could think of, a non-skier to go with me. She immediately said yes.
Bob: [
00:10:35] At the same time, I, also newly single, was alone at home with no plans for the night. My friends insisted on picking me up to go to the same moonlight ski. Ignoring my protest, they picked me up and took me to the park. I entered the warming shed and the first person I saw was Polly.
Polly: [
00:10:53] The ski in the full moon light was beautiful.
Afterwards, I was talking to a friend in common about the first college course I was about to begin at age 33.
Bob: [
00:11:03] I came over and showed Polly and her friend the lamination on the bottom of my ski.
Polly: [
00:11:08] Bob's ski lamination, did not compare to my excitement about starting college, so I did not give him much attention.
Bob: [
00:11:16] Afterwards, I asked our friend about Polly and I liked what I heard. Early the next morning I called her. I later told Polly that she was the first thing I thought of when I woke up that day. We set a time to meet for coffee and the rest is history.
Polly: [
00:11:30] We dated for three years. Both of us had children and we had logistics to work out. On February 10th, 1989, we were married.
Bob: [
00:11:38] Each year, on January 29th, we marveled that if just one thing had not happened we may never have met. Cross-country skiing is still a huge part of our lives. We have been lucky enough to ski all over the world.
Polly: [
00:11:51] We still love Peninsula park. We help with the candlelight ski, we sled with the grandkids and we're helping develop plans for an improved warming shelter.
Erin: [
00:12:03] My name is Erin Dams and my husband is Greg Dams, and my husband actually proposed to me at Lapham Peak State Park.
Greg and I started dating in 2013 and early on we had gone to Lapham Peak, so it kind of became a thing that we would either go hiking or camping at this state park. In the summer of 2017, we adopted a dog. So when Greg had asked about taking him hiking there, I didn't really think anything of it. We didn't really live right in that area anymore, but I thought it was a great idea.
You know, we'll go make a day trip, take the dog out, it'll be a ton of fun. And then Greg said he wanted to go geocaching, which was not something we had ever done before, but it sounded like something Greg would randomly want to do. So I didn't think anything of it. So we're going to the park and you know, Greg's telling me where to go for the geocaches.
And, uh, we find the first one and it's this cute little ornament of like a coffee cup, which is perfect cause we do coffee dates all the time. And then we're going along and we find the second one and it's a camping ornament, which is also something we enjoy doing. What a weird coincidence. And then we're driving to the third one and Greg kind of forgot where he put it.
So we're kind of in the area and Greg's trying to find it. And then our, our dog, Tito, is actually like kind of pulling us around. And Tito ended up finding it, which seemed absolutely incredible at the time. But in hindsight, I'm sure he just smelled that Greg had been there, you know, earlier that day. Spoiler alert, Greg had planted all of the caches.
They were not real geocaches. So then we get to the last geocache, which is at the observation tower. And we're looking and looking, and I can't find this thing for the life of me, and Greg is insisting it's there. I'm convinced it's not. And it turns out it was this tiny little like thimble-sized geocache.
So I finally find it. And you know, I open it up, it has this little piece of paper in it, and I'm, you know, unrolling this piece of paper and it just says, "Erin, will you marry me?" So of course, I do turn around and Greg is on his knee for the proposal and asking if I will marry him. So of course I said "yes."
And we ended up getting married in April, 2019.
Natalie: [
00:14:48] My name is Natalie Weeks, and this is my state park love story.
So two summers ago, I was out in Wyoming working for an organization called Safari Club International, doing a professional development for teachers, teaching them how to teach wildlife conservation since I teach a class to my high school students all about processing game and wildlife management and camping and fishing and hunting and all of that good stuff. So my now husband came out to visit me at this camp, and I was really, really hoping that he would propose to me in the Bridger Teton National Forest. It would have been the perfect backdrop, but it never happened.
And he, uh, went back home and to say I was disappointed would have been the understatement of the century. So a couple of weeks later, I head home and I drive for two days straight, finally get back home to Wisconsin. He's so happy to see me. And the first thing he says is, "Hey, tomorrow morning, do you want to go kayaking?"
And I thought that was weird because I just drove for two days and I just wanted to sleep. And I'm like, sure, sounds great. And he's like, all right, well let's go to Pike Lake State Park tomorrow. And I'm like, all right, sounds good. Go to bed, wake up in the morning. And it's a beautiful day. So I said to him, "you know what? Pike Lake is probably going to be really busy," cause it was a Sunday. And I said, "let's go to Little Cedar Lake." So we went to a lake a little bit closer to our house. And we kayaked and got to the middle of the lake, grabbed my kayak, pulled it close to him, and he proposed and I said, "Oh my gosh, are you kidding?"
And he's like, "no, of course not." So I was really impressed that he wanted to do it on water where he could potentially drop a ring into the bottom of a lake. But we did get our Pike Lake love story because we got our engagement pictures taken at Pike Lake, and it was the perfect backdrop with the water and fall colors, and it was absolutely beautiful and couldn't have hoped for anything better. And he knew that Pike Lake was really important to me cause I go trail running there a lot and open water swimming and kayaking and I absolutely love that park. Then so it was really special that we were able to get our engagement pictures there and then we'll have those pictures forever.
And that is our state park and public lands love story, and we really, really hope to raise kids to love the outdoors like we do, and love hunting and fishing and camping and water sports and everything that makes Wild Wisconsin wild.
Morgan: [
00:17:35] Hi, my name is Morgan and I am from Chippewa Falls. My husband is David, and we started dating in the summer of 2015. Our first date was at a local park here in Chippewa and every other date since then, we just kept going to different parks in the area. And after I met his parents for the first time, they, they knew how much we like to be out in parks and so they got us a, uh, a state park pass. And we had been eager to go to a couple of parks that were further away. And so we started planning a trip and our first one was to Devil's Lake.
Now, the night before we went to Devil's Lake, we unintentionally stayed up until 4 in the morning just talking about life and, you know, the potential of getting married. And, um. We went on the trip anyway, very sleep deprived. But we went and we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. When we got to the park, we started hiking one of the trails, uh, we heard there was a beautiful lookout spot over the lake. But we didn't know how steep it was, and that climb was incredibly difficult, being as sleep-deprived as we were. Shortly after that, we got engaged and my husband took me to his hometown over in Door County, uh, which I had never been to Door County before.
So of course we had to explore all of the parks in that area, and ultimately we decided to get married in Potawatomi State Park. We got married in October of 2015 and we ended up eloping, so it was just me, David, the pastor who married us and our witnesses. Uh, or so we thought. We, uh, uh, got to the park and our intention was to get married on the top deck of the watch tower that was next to Lake Michigan.
Um, but when we got there, there was already a group of about five or six people at the top. So, um. We waited and they didn't come down. And it was about 40 degrees and really windy out that day. So we decided to just get married on the deck that we were on so that we could get back to our warm cars. And about halfway through our ceremony, the people who were on the top deck started coming down and they walked right through the middle of our wedding.
As they were coming down and they realize that they were interrupting a wedding. They started shushing each other, but we just, you know, stopped and smiled at them and we all kind of awkwardly laughed. And after they were gone, we continued on with our wedding. And, um, it's not your typical wedding by any means, but we wouldn't have had it any other way.
Brian: [
00:20:27] Hi, this is Brian and Sarah Hefty, and here is our Wisconsin State Park love story.
Sarah: [
00:20:33] Brian grew up in New Glarus and started working part-time in state parks just out of high school and throughout college at Cadiz Springs Recreation Area, New Glarus Woods State Park. I grew up in Dodgeville in southern Wisconsin and moved to eastern Wisconsin near Milwaukee, but loved camping and exploring many of Wisconsin State Parks with my family. Brian and I both attended college at UW-Stevens Point. It was at UW-SP where Brian and I met through mutual friends and soon found out each other's love of Wisconsin state parks. Well at UW-SP, our closest state park was Rib Mountain State Park. We would go visit in our free time.
One special day in November, Brian proposed to me at the top of the lookout tower at Rib Mountain State Park. Since then, we have camped, kayaked, biked, skied, fished and hiked together at many Wisconsin state parks. We now have been married 20 years and we enjoy taking our two kids to all of unique and special state parks in Wisconsin.
And of course we have taken them to Rib Mountain State Park where it all started.
Emilie: [
00:21:52] And I'm Emilie. We've been together for a little over five years now, and we thought we'd just share a little bit of why Wisconsin state parks have been such an important part of our relationship.
Alec: [
00:22:02] So we met in college and since we both love the outdoors, one of the first dates I took her on was to Rib Mountain State Park in Wausau.
Emilie: [
00:22:10] Yeah, it was so much fun. We went hiking and took pictures. It was a blast. And I actually grew up near High Cliff State Park. So when I brought him home to meet my parents, one of the first things that we did together was go hiking there.
Alec: [
00:22:22] After that, we kind of had the idea of trying to visit all the state parks in Wisconsin and go to each one and take pictures and just experience them all.
Um, we actually have a poster board that we keep track of all of them, and we pin pictures that we've taken at each state park to the board, and it's going to be a giant map of all the pictures.
Emilie: [
00:22:43] Yeah, it's a work in progress, but I think we've been to 16 so far.
Alec: [
00:22:48] And some of them we've gone to many, many times.
Emilie: [
00:22:51] Near his family's cabin up north. Um, we really like Copper Falls and Amnicon Falls.
Alec: [
00:22:57] Last September I bought a ring. I knew after all of the experiences that Emilie and I had together, the proposal needed to be in a state park. I planned a trip to our cabin in October and I invited my brother and Emilie's sister and her boyfriend to join us, and nobody knew what I had planned.
I told them I wanted to show them state parks and plan a full day where we would go to Copper Falls, Amnicon Falls and then Pattison State Parks. Copper Falls was always our favorite and I always wanted to propose there, but when we reached the spot I wanted to do it in, it was too crowded and I backed down.
We left and I traveled to Amnicon Falls next. I was feeling defeated and felt that the right spot and moment had passed. As we explored Amnicon Falls, I noticed from on top of a small cliff, a peninsula with a lone tree sitting right on top of a waterfall, and I realized it was the perfect spot. I told Emily I wanted to get a picture in that spot and I brought her down there and that was when I surprised her and got down on one knee.
Emilie: [
00:23:53] It was, "oh my gosh. It was just like a fairy tale. I'm still blown away. Of course, I said "yes." And now that's our new favorite spot. This really just cemented to us even more how important state parks are to us and in our relationship. And I mean, they'll be a big part of our lives, our entire lives as we grow and have a family and we'll always have state parks and we'll always have those memories.
Katie Grant: [
00:24:22] As you can tell, there's a lot of love at Wisconsin state parks. Learn more about state parks and even how you can host your own wedding at one at dnr.wi.gov. We want to hear from you. What questions would you like to hear answered on a future episode? Email us: DNRpodcast@wisconsin.gov. Thanks for listening.