Opening the “Door County” Adventure
Making memories has become a weekend ritual, and this weekend’s adventure checked all the boxes of an epic adventure! We packed all of our camping and beach gear into the car and headed north to explore Door County, Wisconsin. With only a couple of days there, we were only able to see a small sliver of the peninsula. We did our best to hit the highlights, follow some friends’ advice, and walk down memory lane from when Amity visited the area with her family in her younger years. Door County lives up to all the hype around it! What an amazing place!
Mile: 67,702
Quote of the Blog: “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” - Chief Seattle
Song of the Blog: “Open the Door” - The Movement ft. Collie Budz
We didn’t have many weekends left where the weather would be nice enough for us to camp and swim in Door County, so when I looked at the forecast and saw we had a good-weather weekend ahead, we quickly found a campsite and packed the car. The drive up to Door County is very short. We are only one hour from Green Bay, and once we were there, it felt like just a few minutes of driving before we were pulling into Sturgeon Bay. We wanted to walk around the harbor for a little bit and get a beer at Bridge Up Brewing Company. The area around the harbor is beautiful. The brewery had some patio seating where we could enjoy the weather, and we were lucky enough to see the bridge go up in the harbor to let a large sailboat pass through. We then hopped back into the car to finish our drive up to Sister Bay. On the way up, we made a detour to check out Whitefish Dunes Beach and Whitefish Bay. These are places I have always seen on Google when searching the weather in Whitefish, MT. It’s comical and amazing to put these pieces together. The beach was not far from our campground, so we made our way.
We were camping at Dovetail Acres Campground. It’s a nice spot that is nothing too special but well maintained. We got camp set up and made a quick fire to cook dinner. It was appropriate to have some Wisconsin brats with a side of cheese curds. Just a short walk away from the campground is a wine bar called Twelve Eleven Wine Bar that was having music that night, so we walked over and enjoyed the entertainment. While we were there, Amity found her perfect hat. On it was a patch that said “Central Time Social Club.” We are now officially in the club! After the music, we headed back to camp. I got a fire going, and we enjoyed a night under the stars. We haven’t camped since we lived in Arkansas, and we couldn’t be happier to be around a fire again.
That night, I was woken up by the sound of something falling in the tent. I didn’t think much of it and fell back asleep. In the morning, I woke up to find that one of our tent poles had snapped in the middle of the night, and the sound of something falling was the tent breaking. We were able to get up, quickly break down the tent, and get ourselves ready for the day. We made a plan to go to the Walmart on the peninsula at some point to get a cheap tent Amity found while looking online. First things first, we needed breakfast. Our sights were intently set on getting breakfast at Al Johnson’s in downtown Sister Bay. Al Johnson’s is an iconic spot in Door County. The roofs are covered in grass, and when the weather is good, they let goats out onto the roof to tend to the grass. Unfortunately, a little rain came in and kept the goats from coming out. Amity came here when she was younger but only remembered it having one building. The restaurant now has three large buildings and a massive patio/beer garden area in the center. It’s quite the complex, especially since all the roofs are grass. At one point during the day while we were walking around town, we actually saw someone on the roof mowing the grass. We both died laughing!
Following breakfast, we headed north to the tip of the peninsula. We found a ferry terminal to Washington Island. We watched a couple of ferries land and take off. It really reminded us a lot of our time living in Anacortes and exploring the San Juan Islands. I don’t think it had really set in that we were looking at a lake and not the ocean. The vastness of the water is crazy and hard to comprehend. We then made our way south along the west side of the peninsula. As we were driving through Ephraim, I passed a very colorful building in a small harbor, so we had to do some tourist’ing and check it out. It turned out to be the Water Street Art Gallery, and the building allows you to come and paint your name on the outside of it. Unfortunately, you have to bring your own paint, so we weren’t able to add our names. It did make for a great photo spot, and my model (Amity) crushed it!
Just south on the shoreline, we were back in the Sister Bay area with a plan to head out to Peninsula State Park. While paying for our entry to the park, we learned that a yearlong pass for all state parks in Wisconsin costs only as much as two day passes. It sucked that we had already paid for multiple day passes to state parks, but now we’re set for the rest of our time here, and our car looks a little more local with the sticker in the window. Peninsula State Park is a beautiful area with a lot to do. We took the time to do a large lookout walk that took us up a long wooden path starting at ground level and rising to treetop level, before ending at a large overlook platform. It was very unique and a fun little activity. We were able to take it all in, snap some pictures, and get off the platform right before it started raining. We were lucky to be right next to our car and raincoats. We then walked out on the Eagle Bluff Trail, which took us out onto a large bluff overlooking Sister Bay. We could see the bluffs from town, so it was cool to stand on them and take in the epic views. The rain was very light and intermittent, so it didn’t stop us at all. We had been encouraged to check this park out by some Montana friends, and we could see why they loved it so much. It’s such a diverse park, and we could tell that if the weather was good, the lake access would be hard to beat.
On the south end of Peninsula State Park is Fish Creek, Wisconsin. This is a cute town that is in full tourist mode. We wanted to check out their shops to see if there was any kind of Door County gear or gifts we needed. Amity again found herself loving all the hydrangea flowers. It’s funny how much this area is like Cape Cod. We’ve seen a couple of references to The Cape out here, including a hotel called “Cape Cod Motel” and places selling lobster Rolls. Our time spent in the shops was perfectly timed with a solid downpour of rain, which ended up being the last bit of rain for the weekend. We then made our push south toward Sturgeon Bay, where we planned to make our Walmart run for a replacement tent. We ended up spending only $35 on a tent that will get its use while we work on getting some replacement poles for our main tent.
The last activity we had on our plans for the day was to get some cherries. Door County is famous for its cherries. This reminds me so much of Montana and Flathead Lake cherries. We ended up finding a large orchard and store called Lautenbach’s Orchard Country Winery & Market. They had everything in there. We ended up getting some fresh cheese whips to snack on while we sampled some fruit wine and hard ciders. While we were out on the back patio, we noticed a bunch of people standing around a “Cherry Pit Spit” sign, where you could measure how far you could spit a cherry pit. We quickly found out they were getting ready for the Annual Cherry Pit Spitting Championships. What an event! Initially, there was no way I was going to take part in it, but after a couple of cider samples and some fruit wine, I was all in. My attempts in the contest were not impressive, and we didn’t figure out there was a pit-spitting technique until after the event. Amity didn’t want to do it at all, but the free cherries convinced her to try her skills. Too funny! We wrapped up our time at the orchard with a couple of pictures around the cherry trees, purchased some cherries to snack on, and headed up to camp.
We were able to get the new tent set up really easily, which was a big monkey off our backs. You never know how hard a tent is going to be to set up, but we got lucky with this one. For dinner, we headed into Sister Bay. It was a lively night in town. We listened to some music and had a couple of beers at the Biergarten section of Al Johnson’s before heading up to eat dinner at Husby’s Food & Spirits. We wanted to keep it simple, and they hit the spot! Plus, they had some live music too. We ended our night by walking down to the harbor and checking out the boats before watching the sunset over the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful way to wrap up a day full of adventure! We headed back to camp and, after a full day of exploring, slept hard!
The next morning we only had one plan for the day: BEACH DAY! The weather was amazing and played out perfectly for a day on the water. We got some coffees on the way, and I had to laugh at Amity. She ordered a drink that came with “volcanic salt,” which turned out to be all the salt necessary to kill ten slugs. She ended up scooping out all the salt with a spoon to make her drink palatable. We decided to head over to Whitefish Dunes State Park and beach for the day. We made a great call on this one. The water was crystal clear, the sand was a perfect temperature, and we had a great day on the water. There is nothing like being in a place named Whitefish! We miss the Montana version of it, but we have to say that Whitefish Dunes Beach is nicer than any beach or lake access Montana has to offer! We also laughed at all the Cape Cod references. This beach is as good, if not better than, most of the beaches we found on The Cape. The water is warmer and not salty, there are fewer people and no traffic, plus—NO SHARKS! We had a great day relaxing on the beach, eating cherries and cheese whips, and enjoying every moment of floating around on our tubes in the lake. It all made it so easy to forget that we are in the Midwest and no longer on the East Coast.
Before we knew it, it was time to make our way home. We had about two hours of car time to get back. This being Amity’s second time in Door County, it lived up to all her expectations. For me, I was definitely impressed! I have multiple friends in Montana from Door County, and I’m having a hard time understanding how they left here and chose to be in Montana. We would love to make it back up here again, but with limited time in Wisconsin, we might have to wait longer than we’d like to make it happen. One thing is for certain, though—we 100% will be back in Door County again! What a special place to Live Rad!