I have some very exciting news to share with you all! A few weekends ago (April 29th to be precise) my boyfriend Luke proposed to me! Before anyone asks there are no rings yet (so no pictures of them), but we do have them picked out. We just have to wait until we have enough saved up now, as neither of us have much (me paying off my student loans, and him just finishing up his undergraduate degree a few weeks ago).
The proposal itself was not super-mushy or anything like that, since that is just how we roll as a couple. On Friday the 28th in the evening we came to the realization that we had no plans for the next day (a fairly rare occurrence). So we decided we would go hiking, as it is an activity we both enjoy doing when we have the time. We realized after researching parks near us that our chosen one, Banning State Park, was only half an hour away from Duluth. We then decided we were going to head up to Duluth instead, and stop at the park on the way back if we had the time.
So, for the proposal itself: Saturday morning comes and I am in the bathroom brushing my hair, getting ready to roll. Luke comes in and asks, “Hey! How about we make this our official engagement day?!” I excitedly respond yes!
We take off for our destination shortly after that. The day was a bit chilly up in Duluth, though there was still plenty of fun to be had there! We started off by having lunch at Clyde Iron Works around 11:00am. I had a quite delicious chicken alfredo stromboli while Luke tried one of their burgers. We both shared fried ravioli as an appetizer (would definitely recommend it!)
After that we headed over to Enger Tower Park, which overlooks the city of Duluth. Climbing to the top of the tower was easy enough, though it was very cold up there with the wind whistling!
We rounded off our time in Duluth by visiting Bent Paddle Brewing and each grabbing a cool beer.
This all did not take an enormous amount of time, so we happily had a lot of time to spend in Banning State Park! One of the biggest features of the park is the Kettle River flowing through it, with several areas of rapids and even a waterfall. We decided we definitely wanted to see this waterfall and began our trek there.
As the winter season had just recently ended (there were still patches of snow here and there at the Enger Tower Park!), the trails had not been groomed for a while. There were several times where we wandered off the paths, simply because we could not tell where the trail ended! It seemed that plenty of other people had done the same thing, as the non-paths we walked on were trampled down by footprints.
In total, we hiked around for over three hours! It was quite exhausting.
I am so happy to be able to spend the rest of my days with this awesome guy, and cannot wait for all of the future adventures we will have!