Married at work: Devil's Lake State Park

We had a very interesting time with our good friends Shannon and Jeremy on this camping trip in Wisconsin. First of all, Devil's Lake is a beautiful park with lots of hiking trails and a wide variety of camping spots. Before the weekend started we were a little leery of the weather. There had been horrible storms the night before and Wisconsin even had a tornado watch on Friday. But I wanted to go anyway because if we don't the whole weekend would be perfect of course and we would kick ourselves for not going.

So we went. The good thing about the weather being bad was that there were tons of cancellations, so we were able to reserve a way better campsite. So we camped the first night, enjoyed our hobos (S+J are no longer hobo virgins...and I just realized that S+J are our initials also...I wasn't talking about us) "enjoyed" some wine and some good conversation. The night was perfect!!

Then the next morning was also really nice outside. We woke up, ate our yummy oatmeal and decided to go canoeing. Now I had opened the windows to our tent because I wanted it to vent out and I was thinking we'd be back after canoeing to change into different gear to go hiking. I think you know where this story is going. Anyway, we walked to the main area (about a mile away) to go canoeing only to find out that the water was too choppy and they wouldn't let us go. So we decided to hike instead. Gorgeous hike! It was such a nice day and it wasn't too sunny so it didn't get too hot. We ate lunch in the hills and really enjoyed our time.

Well a few hours later we came down from our hike and overheard the ranger telling everyone there was a tornado watch for the next 15 minutes. so we decided to wait it out until it was over. Well that watch turned into another watch and became longer and longer. Pretty soon the sky was looking very ominous and we were starting to get worried. Our campsite was about 1.5-2 miles away and of course we had no way to get there but by foot!! So what do we decide to do? Walk on the railroad tracks right by the water and head right towards the storm of course. Shannon and I were a little skeptical about the whole thing but Jeremy and Scott assured us that if the tornado came our way we would just take cover in the nearby ditch right underneath gigantic falling rocks and power lines. Ok, the rocks weren't falling but they sure looked they were about to. Then the rain. It POURED!! And I mean poured. We were walking towards this green sky with the wind blowing like crazy and the rain falling hard. And what did we do? First we walked a little faster. Then we ran. Then we took cover under some trees for a minute. Then...we walked slowly in the rain and savored the moment. "There's something sexy about the rain" is what comes to mind...a song by Kenny Chesney. There's just something about it that's so romantic and unguarded. We of course were dreading going back to see the damage of our newer tent but we had a good mile to walk so we did nothing but laugh and literally jump in the puddles like kids.

Yes our tent and almost everything in it was pretty much drenched so we decided to hunker down in their tent and play some Settlers and eat brats until we were ready to pack up. We were planning on staying another night but we didn't have dry anything so that would not have been fun. It was sad to go early but the storms kept coming that night and hard...so I'm thinking it was better we left early. See, it's a good thing I didn't close the windows :)

Views from hike