The Door

 

   For 20 or 30 years Teresa's been suggesting a visit to Door County. I dragged my feet because I couldn't understand what was so special about a county in Wisconsin. We have plenty of good counties right here in Minnesota. Then I looked on the map and saw that Door County was a 70 mile long peninsula pointing northwards into Lake Michigan. Door County is only half the size of Roseau County. As you'd expect of a peninsula, it has lots of lakeshore, almost three hundred miles. Roseau county has twenty.

  I did my research and discovered that Door County is a tourist trap, but I know from experience that a tourist trap can also have good points if you can manage to avoid the tourists.  According to my guidebook, the worst time to visit was in July and August. I figured the first week in May would be safe. 

  I almost played it too safe. It's been a cold, wet spring in the Midwest this year. We arrived at our Airbnb in Egg Harbor after an eleven hour drive spread over two days. This is one reason we hadn't visited Door County previously. It's a bit out of the way. It was cool and windy over Green Bay, the bay not the city, the evening we arrived. But at least it was sunny. 

  Thanks to all the tourists, Door County is blessed with dozens and dozens of restaurants; far more than its permanent population of 26,000 could support. Many of the restaurants only open in late May. On a Tuesday evening in Egg Harbor only Casey's BBQ was open, which worked just fine. 

  The next morning we visited another restaurant that stays open all year round: Al Johnson's in Sister Bay, a few miles north of Egg Harbor. Sister Bay (pop. 1,100) is the epicenter of tourism in Door County. And Al Johnson's is the epicenter of Sister Bay. The restaurant is a series of several Swedish style log buildings with grass roofs, famous for goats grazing on top.

  The goats wouldn't arrive till later in the month. In discussing Al Johnson's, the guidebook mentioned alternative restaurants if the wait at Al's was too long. We were seated immediately in the huge but cozy dining room. The coffee came presto and our food arrived a couple of minutes after we placed our order. This place knew how to handle mobs.  Al's had two tastefully stocked Scandinavian gift shops with a beer garden on the goat-free lawn between the shops.

  No matter where we are, Teresa likes to get in a good hike. So we drove to the Peninsula State Park. We followed the park road to Eagle Tower to get the lay of the land. The old tower had been torn down in 2016 and this new one was only opened a couple of years old. We climbed the hundred steps to the top for a view of Green Bay and islands. We followed the winding wheelchair ramp through the canopy to get down.

Green Bay from Eagle Tower

  As the day was salubrious, we decided to follow one of the loop trails that started at the tower. The mostly deciduous trees in the forest had not yet started to leaf out and we were able to enjoy the sunshine filtering through the woods. We had a map, but a map could not show all the zigs and zags the trail took. We should have been heading north to hit the lake, but when I checked the compass on my phone we were headed east.

  We had gotten on the wrong trail at a crossing and had to backtrack to the correct trail that went north. When we came in view of the lake we realized we had to descend a rock face to reach the trail that ran along the lake and back to where our car was. By going astray, our invigorating hike was becoming a slog.

  There was a sort of a path down the rock face. I wished I had brought my walking stick along. The lake trail was under a canopy of cedars. The shore was rocky like along much of Lake Superior. It's hard to imagine that if we kept following this wild shore we’d eventually come to Chicago. After a mile we were opposite the tower where our car was parked. Now we had to reascend the cliff, but at least here some long-ago CCC crew had build a stairway of rocks up the path.  

  We drove through the rest of the extensive park then headed northwards looking for a restaurant. We estimated about a third of the restaurants and lodgings were open. The staff at the rest were painting trim and planting flowers. It was now 3:00. We realized we had missed lunch and decided to settle for ice cream to tide us over. But ice cream is definitely tourist driven and all the shops were still closed. At length we reached Gills Rock, the tip of the thumb of Door County. The only place open was Charley's Smoked Fish House. Across a narrow strait we could see Washington Island.

  There was also in Gills Rock the Death's Door Museum. The strait between the mainland and the island is subject to sudden violent squalls which have claimed many ships and lives. The early settlers dropped the "Death’s" part when naming their county.

   The next morning we drove to Cave Point County Park, which my guidebook said was the most photographed spot in Door County. I took lots of photos of the caves along the eroded dolomite shore line. It helped that it was a mild windless day. A helpful sign said that Wisconsin was on the equator half a billion years ago and at the bottom of a tropical sea. Over the eons as Wisconsin slid into its present location, sea creatures piled up on the sea bottom. Later the glaciers crushed them into dolomite. When the glaciers disappeared, Lake Michigan filled the void and began digging caves into  the rocky shoreline.

Cave Point State Park

  Our last must see spot was the Cana Island lighthouse, also on the Lake Michigan side. The lighthouse was built in 1869 to help ships avoid running aground on the reef offshore. There's a great view of the lake from the top of the 89' tower. The nine acre island is connected to the mainland by a rocky causeway. My guidebook had warned that part of the causeway was usually under water so we had brought our water boots along.

  At the visitor center, the employee took our credit card and gave us our wristbands then told us the lighthouse was closed for repairs till August. We wondered why we had to pay since the lighthouse was the main attraction. We learned we were helping support the lighthouse. Ok, I guess. We did wander around the grounds and I learned that in the early days they had to melt lard to power the light because whale oil had gotten expensive because the whales had been almost exterminated.  Lard is sooty so the keeper was kept busy cleaning the glass.

  We only spent two full days in Door County. A couple of locals told us this was the best time of the year to visit before the hordes arrived. The locals realize the economy depends on tourists, but during the season they studiously avoid the tourist zone between EggHarbor, Sister Bay and up to Gills Rock on the bayside of the peninsula. They stick to the back roads till Labor Day has passed. 

  Was our trip worth it? Yes. Will we go back? We're like those visitors who fall in love with Roseau County but never return because life has too many attractions closer to home.