October 8 - Door County, Wisconsin

After breakfast in the trailer, we drove north along the western side of the peninsula, visiting the old schoolhouse winery as our first nostalgic stop. We had stopped there on a camping trip many years before and purchased some of their fruit wine, a novelty to us then which we liked very much. We found the winery just where it used to be altho we thought the color had changed from red brick to white clapboard (that may be faulty memories but that is what we both remember). Inside, the gift shop area had expanded but they still had the wine tasting and the tours of the actual fermentation vats in the basement below. It was nice to see it again even if it had changed slightly, and we again bought a couple bottles of the fruit wines.

Driving on, we turned inland a short distance to see a dairy that offered tours and the ubiquitous gift shop. We learned some amazing facts about Holsteins such as they weigh 1,100 pounds (making cow tipping a dangerous sport), and are milked 3 times a day to produce 10 gallons or about 89 pounds of milk per day. We watched them being milked by machines, which took only about 5 minutes, and then they ambled off to return to their pasture until the next milking. At the gift shop we ultimately broke down and bought five different flavors of fresh fudge, which we munched on at odd Moments during the day.

Our next stop was Egg Harbor where we found the bookstore/coffee shop mentioned by a person we had met on the observation tower earlier. Since they had a menu that included sandwiches and a table where we could look out over the changing fall colors to the lake in the distance, we decided to have a light lunch there. All being book addicts, we looked for some good used books afterward. Lois found a Brother Cadfael and a “cat” mystery for $1.25 each. I bought a copy of Plutarch’s “Lives” and had to pay $2.50, but I consoled myself that since there were biographies of 8 men, the price per life actually worked out to be only about 30 cents, and that made it feel cheaper.

We continued northward to Peninsula State Park and had a nice drive along the shore of Green Bay to Eagle Bluff lighthouse. This lighthouse was made of yellow brick, so when the sun was illuminating it against the deep blue sky it provided quite a pretty contrast. Out in front of the lighthouse was a large anchor from the old sailing ship “Oak Leaf” that had sank in Green Bay 1926. Having visited two lighthouses in the last two days, we declined the $4.00 tour and just enjoyed the view from outside before proceeding on our way.

Our next stop was the Observation Tower where Merlin had taken a great picture of members of the family way back in the 1970s. Monika was living in Kenosha briefly while I was in basic training in the Army, so she came up to Door County on a camping trip with Lois, Merlin, and the kids. With the kids arranged on different levels, Merlin had taken a picture straight down from the top and it really looked interesting. It was great to return to the scene of one of our old family camping trips; it brought back a lot of memories. Some folks again asked if I was English! When I said I was rather from the Chicago area, one of the other women who was from Chicago joined me in a rousing chorus for the song “Chicago” including a chorus-line kick at the end that was a real hoot.

Leaving the Chicago ladies, we continued up the peninsula to the Sister Bay. One interesting restaurant in town had a grass roof complete with goats on it to keep it mowed. Of course, that created the predictable “Look at those goats!” type of traffic jam, and naturally we also had to stop and look. The goats seemed quite content up there, but you could not help wondering how they maneuvered the goats got on and off the roof. Is there, perhaps, a goat elevator in back? Maybe some kind of movable ramp? If anyone else finds the answer to this roadside mystery, please let me know.

At a restaurant earlier we had seen a wood block silhouette with a Door County motif painted on it, and had found the label underneath specifying that it came from the Tannenbaum gift shop just north of Sister Bay. So we drove up there to find the shop and see if they had these wood block silhouettes of some other Door County sights, and were fortunate enough to find one representing the lighthouse at Eagle Bluff that we immediately bought. The saleslady apologetically said that they didn’t have any of the other lighthouses (that we would have also purchased) because gift shops could obtain exclusive rights to the decorations representing each lighthouse—wow, what a restraint of trade and it’s all legal! The shop also had the little angels from Seiffen Germany for $26 that we had purchased there for about $6.00 (see Wanderung 2), so it was clear that at least a couple of middlemen were taking their 100% profit margins. The store was just awfully “frou-frou”, however, and I really couldn’t take it for very long—I had to get outside. There I noticed they had set out some benches where other fugitive males were waiting for their spouses and I thought that was very thoughtful of them.

After Monika and Lois were done with the shop we continued our drive north to Gil’s Rock, the northernmost point of the peninsula except for some offshore islands, and turned back to the south. For the southward journey we drove down the middle of the peninsula enjoying the fall colors until we were back at Sturgeon Bay where we had dinner at Culver’s—we were a big fan by this time. Continuing back to the campground we again watched the moon rise over Sturgeon Bay. Then Lois built our evening campfire and we talked while tending it for a couple of hours before retiring into the trailer for the night.