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Outdoors in Door County

Beaches, bays and forests are keys to this lovely peninsula.

Fish boils, cherry pie, chic shops and a nonstop stream of tourists.

Yes, that’s Door County, all right. But so is this:

Secluded beaches of fine white sand. Estuaries lined with herons. Hiking and bicycle trails winding through sun-dappled cedar forests.

Like Minnesota’s rugged North Shore, Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula was settled by hardy Scandinavian fishermen and loggers. This shore, however, is closer to big cities, which have been sending up vacationing hordes for a century. During the summer, the hubbub can seem overwhelming.

"Oh, it’s just like Chicago down there,’’ says Charlene Berg, who operates Gallery 10 in Gills Rock, at the quiet tip of the peninsula. "If I have to go down there during the season . . .’’ She fluttered her hands in the air and grimaced, as if she’d stuck a finger into an electrical outlet.

But there are good reasons so many people come to Door County. The towns are irresistibly picturesque: Fish Creek, which has so many shops the streets are perfumed by potpourri. Ephraim, where the waterfront is lined by old-fashioned white-frame hotels and steepled churches. Sister Bay, with its pretty waterfront gazebo and the goats grazing on the turf rooftop of a restaurant famous for Swedish pancakes.

Tourists taper off between Ellison Bay, where the old Door can be felt at the Pioneer Store and Viking Restaurant, and Gills Rock, at the ’’tip of the thumb.’’ In Gills Rock, life revolves around Hedgehog Harbor, home of fishing boats and the ferries that take tourists to Washington Island.

"I like to call Door County a long strip of flypaper,’’ says David Weborg, whose family were early settlers in Gills Rock.  "Everyone gets stuck down at the bottom. We’re way out in nowhere up here.’’

Nowhere is an exaggeration; plenty of tourists go through Gills Rock. But the part of Door County to which Weborg is referring — its less-frequented beaches, bays and forests — is the other good reason to visit. The northern Door Peninsula is a wonderful place to be outdoors, with swimming either from placid beaches on the Green Bay side or more dramatic ones on Lake Michigan.

It’s got 58 miles of hiking trails in three of the state parks. There’s boating of all kinds, and the bicycling is superb — on pastoral county roads through the interior, along the lightly traveled lake side and in Peninsula State Park.

Even a single day's bicycling can reveal the Door at its best. One day in late August, I bicycled a 36-mile route in which everything came in twos — lighthouses, beaches, wildlife. Starting from Ephraim, I climbed past the 1859 Ephraim Moravian Church, whose Norwegian members founded the town in 1853 with a rigorous morality still reflected in the village’s ban on liquor sales. From there, County Road Q, lined with blue aster and Queen Anne’s lace, led to the other side of the peninsula and Cana Island Lighthouse, whose white tower rises from woods at the end of a rocky causeway.

Just outside Baileys Harbor, Ridges Road leads to the beach at Ridges County Park and to Ridges Sanctuary, a nature refuge marked by the harbor’s 1869 lower range light. Baileys Harbor is a quiet town, with a few shops, restaurants and the Blacksmith Inn, a B&B in a 1912 half-timber and stovewood blacksmith’s house facing the harbor.

County Road F led past dairy farms and to a 1916 frame storefront at the junction of Maple Grove Road. It was Gloria Hardiman’s Maple Grove Gallery, filled with hand-woven scarfs, hats and tunics of luxurious chenille, wood and mohair, and Hardiman was at the counter patiently answering the favorite tourist question: "Do you live here year-round?’’

Maple Grove led to Fish Creek and Wisconsin 42, then south to the entrance of Peninsula State Park, where the five-mile Sunset Trail envelops bicyclists in a cedar forest. Here, I spotted a pair of does and braked just before the lead one bolted across my path; the other doe just missed a boy on a recumbent bike.

Still in a corridor of cedar, the trail follows the bay shore, wound past the 1868 Eagle Bluff Lighthouse and descends to Nicolet Beach, which was filled with bathers and boaters. Shore Road led to wooden Eagle Tower, which gave everyone who climbed it a panoramic view of the bay, Horseshoe Island and Ephraim, gleaming white in the afternoon sun.

It was a downhill swoop into town, past the park’s 18-hole golf course, the Potawatomi totem pole and red-and-white Wilson’s Restaurant, a 1906 ice-cream parlor that looks as if Hollywood built it.

I spent another day bicycling around Washington Island, getting there across the narrow passage whose turbulent currents earned it the name Porte des Morts, or Death’s Door, from which the peninsula derives its name. There have been hundreds of shipwrecks along the Door’s 250 miles of shoreline, but the water was docile when I was there, and after bicycling, I went rowing along the sheer rock cliffs of Hedgehog Harbor.

Another day, I rented a kayak at Wagon Trail Resort and paddled into the Mink River Estuary, a Nature Conservancy preserve. Its marshy shore literally was lined by herons and egrets  — as soon as I’d scare away one, I’d spot another.

And the beaches! My favorite was the long, pine-fringed crescent of Europe Bay Town Park, straight east from Ellison Bay. Hiking trails from adjacent Newport State Park pass it; one day, I bought a picnic of freshly smoked whitefish, crackers and local apple-cherry juice at nearby Mariner Market and hiked up to Europe Lake, whose sandy shores are just a block or so from those of Lake Michigan.

There were no mosquitoes in those woods, or anywhere else in Door County. I wonder how they do that?

The evenings, too, were made to be spent outdoors — on a concert cruise from Gills Rock, with the setting sun hovering red on the horizon; under the stars at a performance of the American Folkore Theatre, surrounded by the pines of Peninsula State Park; walking through the grounds of the Peninsula Players, whose murky cedar forest, strung with colored lights, looks like a set for "A Midsummer Night's Dream.’’

No wonder tourists get excited about Door County. But the people I met helped me see it as more than a playground: The crusty bookshop proprietor whose many opinions include, but are not limited to, the behavior of tourists. The Kansas City pastor who serves Ephraim’s 1882 Bethany Lutheran Church for two weeks every summer but won’t set foot in congested Fish Creek. The gallery owner who's stung when tourists make rude comments about the art she's chosen.

Tourism is the No. 1 topic of conversation among residents, who are wary of the changes it's wrought. Still, they don't hesitate to point a visitor toward favorite spots in a landscape they love.

Late August — after summer, before the fall-color rush — is a good time to visit. Go see what it’s all about. Tread lightly, venture beyond the shops, and revel in the great outdoors of the Door.

Trip Tips: Door County outdoors

When to go: July, the first three weeks of August and October weekends are  hectic. Weekdays in September and October are very pleasant, as well as April, May and early June.

Accommodations: Always reserve for weekends. There are all kinds of lodging, but most are not on the water; if that’s important, be sure to ask. Many inns offer special rates or packages in winter, spring and late fall.

I liked the Village Green Lodge, half a block off the bay in Ephraim, which has pleasant rooms, a pool and a great breakfast buffet. Its rates are $126-$175 from late June to mid-August, then drop to $106-$140 for late-summer and fall weekdays. 888-471-8277, www.villagegreenlodge.com.

There are dozens of B&Bs; to find them, visit www.wbba.org. In Gills Rock, the pet-friendly Harbor House Inn has a variety of rooms, from the Lighthouse Suite with fireplace and whirlpool, $149-$199, to the Blue Belle room, with two twins and private bath across the hall, $79. The Troll Cottage has stovewood walls and a deck with harbor view, $159. There’s a whirlpool room, sauna, gazebo and bike rentals. 800-853-9629, www.door-county-inn.com.

On the quieter Lake Michigan side, near Ridges Sanctuary, the Blacksmith Inn in Baileys Harbor is very handsome and has 15 rooms with whirlpool, fireplace and balcony, $125-$275. It has its own beach, and use of kayaks is included. (800) 769-8619, www.theblacksmithinn.com.

Events: Lighthouse Walk, third weekend of May. Festival of Nature from Ridges Sanctuary and Maifest in Jacksonport, Memorial Day weekend. Fyr Bal Festival in Ephraim, second weekend of June. Olde Ellison Bay Days, fourth weekend of June. Scandinavian Festival on Washington Island, first weekend of August.

Autumnfest in Baileys Harbor, third Saturday in September. Townline Art Fair in Ephraim, second weekend of October. Fall Festival in Sister Bay, third weekend of October.

Kayak tours: Wagon Trail Resort no longer rents kayaks for use on the Mink River. But  Door County Kayak Tours  does, 920-868-1400. And in Sister Bay, Bay Shore Outdoors Store offers daily guided kayak tours around the peninsula. Three- to four-hour tours are $48 and two-hour sunset tandem tours are $38. Cave Point tours go out at 8 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, $48, and kayak-fishing tours at 7 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, $58. Daily Sea Kayaking 101 tours are $58. Call 920-7598, www.kayakdoorcounty.com.

Nightlife: American Folklore Theatre performs in an amphitheater in Peninsula State Park in summer and at Ephraim Village Hall in fall,  (920) 854-6117, www.folkloretheatre.com. Peninsula Players perform in a theater on the shores of Green Bay near Fish Creek, (920) 868-3287, www.peninsulaplayers.com. 

Information: 800-527-3529, www.doorcounty.com.

Last updated on May 12, 2008