Door County

 

Door County, Wisconsin has crossed my radar a few times and I knew it was pretty scenic but thought it was mostly a tourist trap. Some friends of ours recently went there and affirmed that it was but that one could easily get off the beaten path and do other things so it bumped up on our list. Not two weeks later, my wife got a few days off from work, besides her normal three day weekend and we decided to plan a spur of the moment vacation. Not wanting to spend four nights in a motel in Green Bay and then drive everyday to Door County, because everything in Door County has long since been booked, I looked into AirBnBs in Door County and found one that we liked. It was more expensive than I would normally pay for a night in a motel by a considerable amount, but the location of it off the beaten path and right on the shore of Lake Michigan, seemed exactly like what we were looking for and it happened to be available in two days time so I booked it.

We spent four nights there and came back home feeling very relaxed and refreshed.

On Day One, we went to a farmer's market to scrounge for picnic lunch food and food for future meals. This included stops at a fish monger to pick up white fish caught hours earlier and an assortment of other things from various roadside stops we came across throughout the day.

We drove to a State park for our picnic lunch and then to work off some of it by climbing the tower above for a view of our surroundings.

Though we did take the longer, much less steep way up though it had the exact same elevation gain as the shorter staircase. Eventually we made it back home and spent the evening paddling kayaks and paddleboards that came with the rental on the lake.

Later, I found myself sitting on the shore being scolded by Kingfishers as they fished nearby while I watched the sunset. 

Day two, being a Sunday, we went to church, but not any ordinary church. As it happened, there is a Catholic National Shrine dedicated to an appearance of Mother Mary as an apparition and later miraculously spared during the horrendous Pestigo Fire of 1871 that burned everything but the church and grounds for miles in every direction. It is the only such designated church in the United States and there are less than 30 worldwide. Although I'm Catholic, the church says that believing the sighting actually happened is not obligatory and there isn't any proof to be had other than the word of a teenage girl who grew up to dedicate her life to the church built on the spot where she saw the apparition. 

After church, we found a place to eat local and then went back to our rental where we spent time staring at the view above, playing lots of games, paddling and...

... taking a walk down a nearby lane.

On day three, we drove back to the east side of Green Bay where we visited an animal sanctuary that cares for and rehabilitates wounded animals. We did see some wolves through a heavily fenced in area that was impossible to photograph through but mostly we saw fairly common things like deer, the above turkey...

... ducks and...

...geese. They did have a very nice raptor bird exhibit full of hawks, eagles and owls but the cages were not conducive to photography. We did however enjoy a nice day walking around the sanctuary on the many trails.

Inside the visitor center, they did have a display of a few formerly living and a few still living animals on display, including this four day old Siamese calf.

After that we drove to a cherry orchard where harvest was in full swing. Above is a cherry pitter in action. We didn't pick any cherries as a storm was coming and it was fairly warm and humid but we did buy a few cherry products made by the orchard to enjoy later.

Finally we made our way back to our rental for more paddling, gaming and watching of sunsets.

After checking out of our rental, we started making our way home. Driving through Milwaukee on the way up had been horrendous and so in an effort to avoid it altogether, we decided to visit a Catholic Basilica northwest of Milwaukee built on top of a high hill. This allowed us to stretch our legs a bit and then drive around the west side of the city instead of on the east side on jammed up interstate highways.

Both this Basilica and the National Shrine we saw earlier in the trip had large quantities of walking aids left behind by those that had been "healed" during their visits.

This one also had a large robotic vacuum cleaner tucked into one alcove which I thought was neat. Prayers don't clean the church.

Our last item before leaving the Basilica was to climb the steps up to one of the twin towers. It was a real huff and puff to make it up but it was worth it for the 360 degree views.

We made it home safely that evening and I have no regrets on the money we spent on the rental which we counter balanced by not eating out very often during our vacation and everything else we did that weekend being free of charge. Above is the final sunset which I got to see and as it turned out, it was the best one of them all.