Find Your Adventure, Go Wild In Wisconsin

2020 has been an unpredictable year. Despite the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Wisconsinites have remained resilient. Although times have been tough, Wisconsinites have gotten outdoors to enjoy the many adventures available in our state.

In this episode of Off the Record, we asked residents on Facebook to share their inspirational stories of how they found their adventure at Wisconsin State Parks this summer. These four stories represent a collective upward trend in outdoor activity throughout Wisconsin.

Find your adventure in Wisconsin at https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/outdoorrecreation/adventure.html
--------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT

ANNOUNCER: [00:00:00] Welcome to Wisconsin DNR's Wild Wisconsin Off the Record podcast. Information straight from the source.

KATIE: [00:00:12] Welcome back to another episode of Wild Wisconsin Off the Record. I'm your host DNRs Acting Communications Director, Katie Grant. While the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly presented its fair share of challenges, Wisconsinites have remained resilient. And if there's one thing Wisconsinites did a lot of this year, it was get outdoors. Between the middle of March and June 20, 26.4 million people visited Wisconsin state parks, and throughout all of summer, our parks saw 14% more visitors than in 2019.

The spring turkey season saw 20% more turkey licenses sold. And sales of first time fishing licenses nearly doubled with more than 20,000 more sold this year, than in 2019. In this year of uncertainty, the DNR is proud of the upward trend of people partaking in the exploration of all of the outdoor activities our state has to offer. Here's DNR Secretary Preston Cole with more.

PRESTON: [00:01:17] Outdoor recreation is essential to our economy. Our quality of life, our personal well being and happiness. Wisconsin is home to 49 state parks, 15 state forests, 44 state trails, 84,000 miles of rivers and streams and roughly 15,000 lakes. Leaving folks with tons of opportunity to get outdoors. Being outdoors impacts us in a myriad of ways. But specifically our individual health and wellbeing. Outdoor recreation accounts for 7.8 billion economic impact in Wisconsin. Businesses that sell and rent bikes, kayaks, camping gear are all busier than ever.

The increases that people are enjoying the great outdoors and everything that Wisconsin has to offer has been incredible for us to witness. It's clear to us that navigating this pandemic, that parks and Wisconsin's natural resources, in general, are essential for us as a people. And certainly for Wisconsinites.

While we'll be exploring ways to enrich our parks in the short term and long term, looking for ways to improve the opportunities for newcomers, increases accessibility for individuals with mobility issues, provide better awareness and opportunities for those different ethnic backgrounds or social economic status.

Even though you may see fewer DNR staff in person at your favorite state park, know that they are still working around the clock to ensure you have a positive and safe experience.

KATIE: [00:02:42] We wanted to hear how you spent your summer finding adventure in Wisconsin. Our guests today share their stories of how they took advantage of Wisconsin's vast array of parks and recreation areas this summer. Some experienced things for the first time. Others continued old traditions. So sit back and listen in to hear their stories.

ERIN: [00:03:05] Hi, my name is Erin and I am from New Berlin, Wisconsin, my boyfriend, Brandon, and our two dogs, Mac and Cam are on a journey to camp in fall at as many beautiful Wisconsin state parks as we possibly can. And this unprecedented summer really gave us an opportunity to take our first ever summer camping trip. So we ended up packing up our pop-up camper and headed an hour west of New Berlin to Lake Kegonsa in Stoughton, Wisconsin. And we had a truly unforgettable four day weekend. While at Lake Kegonsa we honestly explored every single dog-friendly hiking trail. And we even did some geocaching in the woods.

And for those of you who have done geocaching before, there are a ton of these in Lake Kegonsa so I highly recommend trying it. But after a trip to the lake, we had hours of campfires. We saw a giant Osprey nest and honestly encountered more ticks and mosquitoes than I'd probably like to admit. We ended up making a memory we will never forget. And got to cross another state park off our list. So thank you so much, Wisconsin state parks and park staff for allowing us to keep our lives super adventurous during such an interesting time in our world history and letting us explore the hidden beauty that is Lake Kegonsa State Park. Next up, we have Mirror Lake State Park scheduled for this October and we can not wait.

JOHN: [00:04:33] My name is John Stellflue. The COVID-19 virus has affected each and every one of us in some way, shape or form. You know, this spring, it caused two of my turkey hunts to be canceled. I had two tags, one for season three in zone one and one for season four in zone four. But with everything going on with Covid we all agreed we probably shouldn't get together as a group and hunt. I was very disappointed. I looked forward to these turkey hunts like many of you guys look forward to gun deer season. But as I drove to work the next morning, I realized that the border of zone one is just west of my home in Sun Prairie. My wheels started to spin.

I knew it was some public land that could work just fine for us. I called my friend. He had the same tag and same season and told him, Hey, let's do this. And he said he was in. I had less than a week to scout, found us a few spots and the plan quickly started to come together for a last minute public land hunt.

Hey, worst case scenario is we spend a few days social distancing in the turkey woods and perhaps find some morels and ramps. Nothing wrong with that. This was going to be my first public land hunt. We... I've always hunted private in the past. My biggest concern was that we were going to be dealing with a lot of hunting pressure.

I couldn't have been more wrong. With all the people not working, Gym still being closed, the only thing many people could do for exercise was to walk the public land. We saw and heard a lot of them. After two and a half days of dodging people, I made the call to head to Governor Dodge State Park. My thought was, this is a very large park and we could escape the people.

We went to the backside of Twin Valley Lake figuring we could get away from the crowds that were enjoying the park on the first day that the parks were open. Cause prior to this, they had been closed because of Covid. We were wrong. It seemed no matter what we did we couldn't escape the people who were enjoying the parks.

As we ate a sandwich on the tailgate of my truck, desperately searching for answers, a friendly DNR park employee stopped and asked if we were seeing any turkeys. I said, all we're seeing is people. He gave us a tip and suggested an area of the park that wasn't frequented by a lot of people. We headed there to check it out.

We really liked what we saw and both of us had spots picked out for the following morning. As the sun came up, I heard gobbling off to my left. I smiled... really big smile. Didn't take long before a group of Jakes showed themselves in front of me. I yelped at them and they started coming to my way. They stopped.