Trip To Door County
It was also a good opportunity to try out my newest gadget, a GPS navigation system that my parents bought for my upcoming birthday. I've always enjoyed the logistical aspects of traveling--the mileage to the destination, the route, which road I'm on. I always buy several maps of the region I'm in, so that I can explore easier. So, I was pretty excited by the GPS unit, because provides all sorts of useful information.
Jess was a skeptic (and still is somewhat). She's not much into technology anyhow (I finally got her to upgrade last year to cell phone made in this century, and only when I bought it), so she's never a huge fan of more gadgets. She actually feels threatened somehow by my computer and camera; I never thought someone could be jealous of a machine until I met Jess. No matter, the GPS unit is for me, anyhow.
The trip itself is nothing, at least for us. When Jess was finding a place to stay, some of the people she talked to were very surprised that we'd drive up for a day. In August, we spent an entire week driving, putting in over 3000 miles. So, a three hour trip doesn't bother us much. Besides, we left early in the morning, and as the sun rose, it came up through some scattered fog for the first hour, which was really beautiful.
For people who may have never heard of Door County, it sits on a peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan, north of Green Bay. I quickly gathered that there tends to be a lot of wealth there, with rich old fogeys keeping their summer homes there. It's also a big summer destination around here, and from what I've heard can be very crowded in the summer months. That would be unfortunate, because it's not really that big of a peninsula. There are quite a few charming little villages of 2000 people or so, many on one shoreline or the other. There's also a lot of history in the area, in particular with ships going in and out of Green Bay back in the 1800s. Best of all, it has a very nice rural feeling to it; the villages aren't large or superficial, and there are several beautiful state parks with hiking, camping, kayaking, and lots of other outdoorsy stuff.
We rolled into the area midmorning and found our hotel. We couldn't check in, but we wanted to use it to get our bearings. The hotel, a mom-and-pop hotel called Baileys Sunset Motel, is small and unassuming, just our kind of place. The owner suggested we head over to the Peninsula Sate Park for hiking, which we did. It didn't take long to get there, you are only at most 45 minutes or an hour from anywhere on the peninsula at any point. The park itself was quite nice; we went for a hike, then headed back to the town of Fish Creek, which is at its entrance, for lunch.
Actually, when the owner of the hotel was telling us where to visit, I thought she was telling me to go to "Fish Crack," that is what it sounded like she was saying. I kept looking for a Fish Crack on the map, and couldn't find it. Then I realized she was telling me to go to Fish Creek. Interesting accent.
After lunch, Jess wanted to go kayaking, so we went back into the park, and found a little business that rented kayaks. I rented our kayak for two hours, I'm not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea. Actually, it wasn't bad, we kayaked the entire time, and had a great time. At one point, there was a couple sitting on the beach watching us go by, so I had Jess in the front paddling hard while I sat back with my heels up on my paddle, just to see their necks craning in shock. There was a fairly stiff wind, so whenever we got away from the shore a certain distance, we would start hitting some fairly large waves. That made it more exciting.
After kayaking, we headed south to the village of Egg Harbor, where there is a little brewery called Shipwrecked. Not only did they have some excellent brew, they were also selling a wine called Hallowine, which is a spicy apple wine that is really delicious when served warm. Apparently, this particular brewery has been around for more than a century, although under different names and usuaully as restaurants. They claim that Al Capone spent a lot of time in Egg Harbor when hiding out, and even in Shipwrecked. Apparently, there is a system of tunnels under the place and the town for a quick getaway. Regardless of stories, they sold a good brew. We picked up a couple of bottles of that and a six-pack, then headed across the street to eat. We'd asked the bartender where he'd recommend that we eat, and he suggested that we eat at a very local place called John Henry's. It's so local that none of the brochures even note it. They had a half-rack of ribs on seasoned sauerkraut that completely changed my opinion about ribs. At that point, we finally headed back to check in at our hotel, since it was getting close to ten.
We had a busy day exploring the next morning. We first had breakfast in another local restaurant, then went to a little nonprofit park, The Ridges Sanctuary, which protects an area of natural ridges formed over thousands of years by the lake. In between the ridges are little micro-environments. It was very nice. We then went to the Cave Point County Park, which is a small park where huge waves from Lake Michigan crash against the cliffs that line that shoreline. With the size of the waves hitting the cliff, as well as the immensity of Lake Michigan (you can't see the far shore), it almost feels like being at an ocean beach.
Just south of the county park is the Whitefish Dunes State Park, with large white sand dunes that reinforced the idea of being at the ocean. Zuri wasn't allowed in that park, so while Jess walked along the beach I took Zuri to the rocky shoreline nearby and took pictures. The park is a little strange, in that it has dunes that look like the beach in North Carolina, but then they end as the evergreen forest meets them. It seems like someone did a little digital manipulation with two landscapes.
It was getting to be mid-afternoon, so we started south towards the largest town in the area, Sturgeon Bay. There is a really interesting lighthouse there, I wanted to take some pictures of it. We had a little adventure with the GPS unit trying to find the lighthouse, it left us on a little country road nowhere near even Lake Michigan. So, we had a little lunch in a quirky restaurant in Sturgeon Bay and looked up directions online. That simplified the process of finding the lighthouse.
As a side-note, we recently broke down and started paying for Internet, through Verizon. We have a little receiver that plugs into our computer and we can get the Net anywhere, even when we are driving or in the middle of nowhere. Pretty much anywhere that we have phone service, we have the Net. Granted, it's like $75 a month with all their fees and so on, which makes me yearn for the days of the free Internet we used to "borrow" from whichever neighbor didn't bother to protect with a password.
At any rate, we did find the lighthouse and I took many photos of it. In fact, I've taken many, many photos all during this trip, and hopefully they will be up on my webpage soon. We continued south towards the little town of Algoma, which is still in Door County although it is not on the peninsula. Jess wanted to visit a Door County winery, so we went to the von Stiehl Winery. We got there right near closing, but they still let us taste all the different wines we wanted to. We bought another case of wine there, even though we still have some bottles from the last vineyard we went to. Algoma bills itself as the "Sports Fishing Capital Of The Midwest." Indeed, it seems there is quite an industry of fishing boats and services there, even though it is a town of about 3400 people. I tossed out a line for a half hour or so just to see if being in such a fishing-centric town would help me out a little. It didn't.
It was dark by the time we got home, and we were tired. Still it was quite a great trip. I will try to have my photos up as soon as possible.
Until next time, be safe.
