Door County Trip

A week at work that was less full for me but more full for my wife completed on Thursday when she passed an exam to become a Certified Project Manager--my life should be very well planned from now on! Friday was our anniversary, so we decided to "double celebrate" and headed over to Door County WI. Amazingly, even though I had grown up in WI and we have lived relatively close for all our 22 married years, this is our first trip. It is certainly much closer than it once was now though with a 4-lane Hwy 29 all the way across WI save for like a mile in Wausau.

Some pictures of the outing.

We stayed at the Bay Breeze in Ephraim and it isa very nice place, although not completely what the Internet indicated. We can just see the lake a bit from the deck, not an "on the lake view". We have had a couple wonderful meals at The Old Post Office restaurant at the Edgewater Resort which looks like where we will likely stay when we come back (and we will). We haven't done price comparisons though. We are in a suite here with a very nice king bad (important feature for Mooses) wireless internet access that I have used very little, nice pool that we haven't used at all, and really very comfortable. Over time, one gets spoiled by the "perfect places" like BlueFin Bay on the North Shore and Windcliff outside of Estes in Colorado. Nothing about Bay Breeze to cause a problem , sometimes it --sometimes it takes a couple of trys for "perfection".

Friday night we had a delicious meal at the C&C in Fish Creek, just down the peninsula from Ephraim. Saturday we drove up to the Washington Island Ferry and rode across and biked around that island. We were slightly surprised that there weren't more lake views off the roads over there, and there wasn't a huge amount special about the island, but little ferry rides of that sort are always a bit of their own adventure.

In the PM we headed down the Lake Michigan side of the peninsula with a nice coffee stop at "Custards Last Stand" (yes, we had to have a little cherry custard as well), and then hiked around Cave Point park for a bit. Lots of undermining of the shore, so as the waves come in they make a nice slapping sound. It has been pretty calm however, so not a lot of noise. We then headed over to the Simon Creek Winery for some tasting and picked up a couple bottles of their wares.

The evening meal was a traditional Wisconsin Fish Boil at the Old Post Office. Red potatoes, onions, carrots, and whitefish boiled over a wood fire, and then "boiled over" with a shot of kerosene at the end to push any impurities that may have risen to the top inot the fire and also make a great large fiery show. The results were very tasty with some pumpernickel bread, great cole slaw and some cherry pie with homemade ice cream for desert.

This weekend is the "Fyr Bal" festival in Ephraim (pronounced "Fear Ball"), a Scandinavian festival where the wicked witch of winter is chased away and summer is welcomed. This is accomplished with the lighting of some huge bonfires, about 10 of them around the bay in this case, and shooting off some nice fireworks. It seemed like a really nice festival, made a little quieter by the fact that Ephraim is a dry town, so no beer tents involved with the celebration.

Today we headed up to Gils Rock and went out on Captain Paul's Charter Fishing. He seemed to know what he was doing, but the weather was likely TOO nice ... we put on some miles and tried 4 different spots. A couple of smaller salmon were picked up by other people on the boat, but we weren't on the lucky list this time. We did however get some GREAT smoked Atlantic salmon at the fish store near the boat.

The PM was spent with some shopping, dinner at the Shipwreck Brewery, and then a relaxing evening of reading and catching up on the Blog before heading home tomorrow.

GREAT Medium Cherry Salsa from here

Excellent Smoked N Atlantic Salmon here