Door County

We reached Door County at the end of a long day’s drive, tired and skeptical, and the peninsula won us over before we’d even found our room. The light was doing that thing it does over big water at dusk, going gold and then pink over Green Bay, and the road ran up between orchards and past little clapboard villages with harbors full of masts. Lia rolled the window down. It smelled of cold lake and cut grass. Someone had described the place to us as the Cape Cod of the Midwest and I’d rolled my eyes, but driving up that narrow finger of land with water on both sides, I understood exactly what they’d meant, and I stopped being skeptical.

Villages and Fish Boils

The peninsula is dotted with small towns — Fish Creek, Ephraim, Sister Bay, Egg Harbor — each a cluster of white and pale-painted buildings around a harbor, and we spent a happy day drifting between them. In Sister Bay we watched goats graze on the sod roof of a Swedish restaurant, which is exactly as strange and delightful as it sounds. That night we went to a fish boil, the local ritual: whitefish and potatoes cooked in a great cauldron over an open fire, and at the climax the cook throws kerosene on the flames so the pot boils over in a roaring tower of fire. Lia gasped. The whole crowd cheered. Then we ate it with melted butter and cherry pie, and it was one of the better meals of the trip.

Lighthouses and the Rocky Shore

Door County claims something like a dozen lighthouses, more than anywhere else on the Great Lakes, and we set out to find a few. The most beautiful was Cana Island, reached by a stone causeway you can sometimes wade when the lake is high; we crossed with our shoes in our hands and climbed the tower to a view of pure blue water in every direction. Down at Cave Point, the limestone shore has been undercut by the waves into ledges and sea caves, and the water throws itself against them and booms up through the cracks. We sat on the rock ledges for an hour watching the swells come in. It was the closest thing to an ocean I’ve felt on a lake.

Cherries and the Quiet End

This is cherry country — the peninsula’s climate, moderated by all that surrounding water, is perfect for tart cherries, and every farm stand sells pie, jam, cider and dried fruit by the bag. We bought too much. At the very tip of the peninsula, past the last town, the land ends at a strait the French called Porte des Morts, the “death’s door” of shipwreck lore that gives the county its name. From there a little ferry runs across to Washington Island, and we took it, mostly to say we had, and found a quiet, sparse place of stone beaches and few people. We skipped stones. Lia won. We rode the ferry back into another gold and pink evening, sunburned and content.

Getting There

Door County occupies the peninsula northeast of Green Bay, Wisconsin, whose airport is the nearest, about a forty-five-minute drive from the southern end of the county. Milwaukee is roughly two and a half hours south, and Chicago about four. You’ll want a car — the villages, lighthouses and orchards are spread the length of a long peninsula and there’s no transit between them. Summer and the autumn cherry-and-color season are busiest; come midweek or in the shoulder months for the quiet coves the place does best. And go hungry. There’s a fish boil with your name on it.