Out to the End of Door County

Door County sticks out into Lake Michigan for about 70 miles and forms Green Bay (and looks like a thumb on the state of Wisconsin). We have been staying in Kewaunee, WI, which is right on the bottom of the peninsula and just south of Door County. We wanted to check out the northern part of Door County, so tooled north to see the sights. Right after we entered the county, we saw this beautiful field of sun flowers which put us in a good mood for our trip.

After traveling through Sturgeon Bay, which we had visited earlier, we stopped by this farm market to explore the offerings. They featured Door County cherries in the traditional tart, sweet and interestingly, a yellow variety. Rick really liked these (they were like a regular sweet cherry) ad we purchased a few (and some wonderful baked goods).

The Seaquist Market also offered the chance to see some restored tractors, such as this early '50s John Deere, which was in great shape. I suspect these folks have quite a bit of time to work on these during the frigid winter months.

The end of Door County is called, appropriately enough, "Land's End", which certainly makes sense when looking at it above. There is a ferry that will take you to the islands just north of Land's End, but this was far enough for us today. The small marina you can just see above is typical of the man-made marinas that provide some shelter from the big lake.

At Land's End, there was a number of boats, including this classic Lake Michigan commercial fishing boat. The enclosed cabin and rear steering area seemed typical of these steel-built craft of about 40' long.

In the same area, this fishing boat, of the same kind as the one in the water, was displayed to really give an idea of how the boat was designed. These are very utilitarian, seaworthy, and protect the crew from the cold and icy spray. Made us cold just to think about being out in one on a windy October day.

We traveled to Land's End up through the center of Door County and then took the road on the western side on the return. Close to Land's End, we came to Ephram, a beautiful small town right on the Bay.

Ephram had a number of attractions, including some beautiful flowers all around the town. These caught our eye, but, Wilson's Cafe provided a different attraction:

Lunch was served -- we split a great ice cream treat featuring real Wisconsin ice cream. Of course, Orinda was viewing this as a healthful dairy product and the fact that it tasted wonderful, had no influence on our decision to purchase. Really!