An Adventure, In So Many Words

Hold on to your hats people, this may resemble one of those old family vacation slide shows. Which seems to be a theme of mine this summer, with two trips down and one to go. But that pile of photos that I told you about yesterday? There are some that I really love.

So, we spent a long weekend living out of our car and sleeping in different places every night. If you live anywhere near Wisconsin, you’ve probably heard of Door County and how wonderful and beautiful and fantastic it is, but in reality? Well, it pretty much is. And if you’re like me, you might not believe it until you see it. It’s a little funny to me, because the string of tiny towns on the lakeshore seem to be trying really hard to remind you of the ocean seashore of say, Northern California or New England, with all of the cedar shake siding and whitewashed wood, but personally, I have a hard time pretending that the lake is the same as the beach on the ocean. But it’s still nice.

We stopped in at the White Gull Inn in Fish Creek to see if we could get in on the fish boil without reservations, and we got super lucky because they were booked full but had one cancelation. Evidently the fish boil is something they’ve been doing up there forever, since the arrival of Scandinavian settlers. It was pretty enjoyable to sit outside and watch them boil dinner over an open flame, and I opted not to take the camera and just experience it the old fashioned way.

They must have had some seating malfunction, because when it was time to eat, they didn’t have a table for us inside, so they asked if we would mind eating outside. After a split second of decision, we knew it would be perfect to eat outside on the patio, alone, away from all of the noise and commotion inside. As we were finishing our pie, people were starting to trickle in for the next dinner, and this cute little older British couple sat with us and we had the most fun conversation about American sports. Random, but so sweet.

We camped on Saturday night at Peninsula State Park. It is a gorgeous park, and we had a nice little time on our own there. I actually wished we had planned to camp for more than one night, that’s how lovely it was. And that’s saying something, because I am not a huge fan of sleeping on the ground. We cracked open a bottle of wine and drank out of some itty bitty picnic wine glasses and made s’mores and watched the fire and took experimental pictures of the stars. The next morning we hiked one of the more difficult trails, and then drove farther north to take the ferry through the Death’s Door Passage to Washington Island for lunch.

Now, I think we’ve done this before, gone somewhere for lunch that ended up being alot more work and adventure than you would think you would get on a lunch outing. We didn’t want to pay to take the car on the ferry so we winged it and went on foot, realizing when we got there that it was 3ish miles to “town.” So we ended up spending almost as much renting one-speed bikes to ride in – but what an experience it ended up being. We rode by lupin speckled wheat fields whose crop is used to make Capitol Island Wheat, a whistling windmill, the ball field where everyone in town was gathered to watch baseball. We finally found ourselves a place to have a mediocre lunch, and then rode back to the ferry terminal.

And I failed to take a picture of the two irresponsibly sized styrofoam cups containing milkshakes that we purchased at the Albatross drive in and carried in my bicycle basket back to the ferry, nestled snugly next to the camera case and my purse. It would have been a great picture, I’m quite certain, but we were worried about missing the ferry and so it just didn’t get snapped.

My favorite part of Door County, though, are the farms in the interior. Cherry orchards and wheat fields span the wide open spaces with barns and silos dotting the horizon. After some quality time was spent with some of the family that was up there together, we drove around on Monday morning doing the Pull Over Maneuver to take pictures of the landscape. You know the one, you pull onto the shoulder and leave the car running while you get out and scamper through the ditch in innappropriate footwear to take pictures as the few passing cars look at you funny.

We’re planning to go back this fall for a long weekend of hike-in camping at Newport State Park, and I couldn’t be more excited.