Door County

 June 2025

We began Cindy’s birthday "weeks" in Door County Wisconsin. Forty-five years ago Cindy was in a Bluegrass band that played weekend gigs there and she wanted me to see the area. We flew into Milwaukee and drove to Sheboygan for the night. We met Rick, who along with his wife Sue took great care of Colin and his young family when they were stationed in Sheboygan. Rick recently lost his wife to cancer and we wanted to take him to dinner so that we could talk to him and extend our condolences. We ate at a well-known Italian restaurant, Stefano’s, and the food, wine, and conversation were stellar. The next morning we met Rick at the Coast Guard Station; Rick has been with the USCG Auxiliary for 26 years. There we got a tour of the new facilities and vessels and were shown the plaque on the side of the building that has Colin’s name on it as he was head of station when the new building was erected. 

From there we drove north trying to hug the coast of Lake Michigan as much as possible. It is all farmland and forest and very beautiful, a relaxing ride as compared to sticking to the highway. Once on the Door Peninsula we took a quick detour to Whitefish State Park to see the famous dunes and rock formations. The first thing we noticed upon exiting the car was the COLD!  Man, it was cold and windy and not what we were expecting, nor what the weather channel was expecting since they told us it was going to be fifteen degrees warmer and sunny.  Luckily we had stopped at a WalMart for a hoodie and sweatpants as we left Sheboygan. Weather not withstanding, we had a lovely, albeit short, walkabout and noted that we had entered another spring season. We normally go to places in January, February, and March that are entering their spring time so that when we get home to our spring we’ll have had three or four springs under our belts. This is the first time we experienced all those springs and then started over again. Wild flowers, cherry and apple blossoms, tulips, daffodils - you name it - and they were just starting to bloom. Quite lovely.

We stopped for some photo ops at the Blue Ox, the bar where Cindy played back in the late 1970s. She went in and talked to the bartender who told her they don’t do live music anymore. Other than that she said it all looked the same. We finally got to our hotel around four and we were very impressed by it. The night before in Sheboygan we had stayed in what was touted as a boutique hotel on the river but in reality was a Motel 6 with new siding. We had the smallest room imaginable and a tiny bathroom with a toilet that had to have been custom built by Kohler, which is based there. I swear the toilet was only about twelve inches off the ground - which, when you are used to one meeting you halfway - is quite the drop!!  On a positive note, the people were incredibly nice and it was clean.

Back to Door County: This hotel in Sister Bay, the Dörr, is very Nordic in design - as is everything up here - and relatively new. Our room could easily accommodate three of the rooms from Sheboygan. It is light, bright, and well-appointed; we are happy campers. We unpacked and walked down to the lake for a much needed leg stretch. It was still very cold and cloudy and the wind was intense, threatening to remove our faces!!  We retreated to the hotel for a glass of wine and conversation with the bartender who provided us with valuable information regarding restaurants, sites to visit, and general insider information.

On the trip up the peninsula we noticed there were no fast food emporiums. Turns out that that is by design. Retail chains have never been here and will never be here, quite a feat for such a popular tourist destination. Everything here is a mom and pop run business. There is one place, Al Johnson’s, which has been here forever. It is a Swedish restaurant famous for its Swedish pancakes, meatballs and lingonberry jam. It is composed of four huge buildings with sod roofs - and in season they put goats on the roofs to ‘mow’ the sod. It is a real tourist must see and there are goat-themed posters, postcards, and lawn decorations all over the place. We had breakfast there and it was good but not forty-two dollars good. We had no booze, just some Swedish pancakes, eggs and bacon. The place was filled with a waitlist to be seated, so price doesn’t seem to deter the locals (or tourists). 

All the food here is expensive, compared to West Virginia, as is the wine. Again, it is a tourist town but the locals also eat here so I’m not sure if the prices are tourist driven or just reflecting the fact that it takes a while to transport food up here. While expensive, we have found the food to be fresh, well prepared and certainly served with smiles. Everyone smiles up here, must be the water and clean air.

The weather continued to be lousy, cloudy, cold, and very, very windy. We visited three state parks and enjoyed them until we were too cold to continue walking so we drove through them. All and all it was a wonderful trip but I’ll never go back since there are other things we need to do while we can. On to Milwaukee!   Cindy and William