An interactive honeymoon – Wisconsin side of Lake Superior near the Apostle Islands
Submitted by Linda McShannock
Chuck and I spent the last couple of years building a log cabin on his property on the Wisconsin side of Lake Superior. When my daughter and her boyfriend came up to spend a weekend with us at the cabin, they took that opportunity to announce their engagement. Chuck, touched by the moment, offered the cabin for their summer honeymoon.
Over the next couple of months and multiple trips to the Lake, we planned entertainment for their visit. We plotted coordinates using a handheld GPS, as we hid presents in the woods and created a notebook of daily clues to keep them entertained for the week.
We picked out the most scenic spots on the property to place various real and joke gifts. We buried a bottle of champagne in the cool clay and included coordinates for a nearby log and pond to enjoy a toast; hung a gift certificate to the local coffee shop from a branch overhanging one of the trails we had cut through the woods. Thinking they would enjoy finding the blackberry patch with its ripe berries, we directed them to a can of sardines tucked into a balsam tree on the edge of the field of berries. The sardine can was a family joke referencing Megan’s grandmother’s overstocked kitchen of inedible food. The final package for them to find was a set of pottery bowls, made by a local craftsman that we carefully protected in a Styrofoam box, camouflaged with balsam branches and hid along the scenic path past the Aspen grove.
They neglected to turn the page. Imagine our puzzlement, when they returned from their honeymoon enthusiastic about the champagne, but clueless about the other carefully placed treats. It took several additional trips to the Lake to retrieve the overlooked packages under strict parental supervision. The notebook remains in the cabin along with their additional notes to us. Revisiting the notebook and the hiding places on the trails on subsequent visits are tangible memories of an interactive honeymoon at the cabin.
