While its Swedish pancakes are highly acclaimed, it’s the goats who munch grass atop its roof that made Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant popular.
Photographing Cave Point County Park.
The peninsula’s seemingly pedestrian name has nautical roots, conferred by French explorers who met their match trying to navigate the devilish waters snarling around its northern tip back in the 1600s. Those who survived the shipwrecks named the passage Porte des Morts, or Door of the Dead—and the Door part stuck. Our drive north along Green Bay on SR 42 led us through Egg Harbor, a charming little hamlet of 280 residents that legend says gained its name from an egg fight between groups of wealthy vacationers. The town sits on a bluff above a deep, well-protected harbor that makes it a favorite anchorage of summer sailors. Our destination for the day was Fish Creek, another small town about 15 minutes north, where we’d reserved a campsite for our rental RV at Peninsula State Park. Fish Creek becomes Door Country’s social and cultural hub each summer with a busy schedule of music and theater events. Students from Birch Creek Music Performance Center stage concerts here and the Peninsula Players, America’s oldest professional summer resident theater, present plays six nights a week from mid-June to mid- October. We ordered a take-out pizza at Wild Tomato Wood- Fired Pizza and Grille, opposite the park entrance,
before heading in to secure our site. On the way in, we encountered one of the park’s most outstanding features, the lush 18-hole Peninsula Golf Course, often cited as one of the most scenic courses in the state. Peninsula State Park is Wisconsin’s third largest state park, sprawling over 3,776 acres and is immensely popular, attracting nearly a million visitors a year. The park’s five campgrounds offer nearly 500 sites. Open year-round, the park is laced with hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing trails. During the summer months, kayaks and canoes are available for rent at Nicolet Beach, where there’s also a nice stretch of sand for swimming and sunbathing. Towering limestone bluffs, some as high as 150 feet, rise from the shore of Green Bay and provide panoramic views from stone-lined overlooks constructed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Another key attraction is Eagle Bluff Lighthouse. President Andrew Johnson authorized construction of this handsome light in 1866, and it was completed in 1868. The lighthouse is open to visitors, and there’s a small museum in the former lighthouse-keeper’s home.
DOOR COUNTY
COAST TO COAST FALL MAGAZINE 2017
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