Door Peninsula Wisconsin #2

The Door Peninsula is a beautiful and peaceful area. In the middle of the Peninsula are farms, orchards, and several wineries. The farms are typical of what we saw driving up from Illinois. They usually have a pretty white or perhaps stone house with a large red barn and one or more silos. You see large orchards, dairy cattle, corn, soybeans, wheat or rolled hay in the fields. The land is gently rolling, and the fields are surrounded by stretches of green woods. Various wild flowers grow along side the roads and most homes have pretty perennial flower gardens. The growing season here is shorter than in the South, but the days are much longer. The birds start chirping around 4 am and there is faint light around 3:30 am. It gets dark around 9 to 9:30 pm. So I guess the long daylight hours even things out. Everything looks lush and green, except where the golden colored wheat and hay fields make a pretty contrast.

Around the shore of the Peninsula are beautiful small villages and numerous state and county parks. The villages are full of summer tourists, but the villages do not have any of the gaudy “touristy” places with bright neon lights, etc. like you find in some parts of Myrtle Beach or Gatlinburg. Instead they remind me more of Hendersonville or Ashville, NC. I’m told this is considered to be the Midwest version of quaint New England villages. Having never been to New England I can’t compare them, but all the villages here are lovely.

Wisconsin and Door County have done an excellent job setting aside parks to protect and make available some of the most beautiful areas along the shore. The largest park is Peninsula State Park. I think it is considered the crown jewel of the Wisconsin park system. It has beaches, many hiking and biking trails, a huge campground, and a beautiful golf course. We visited the park several times. Twice we took Clay along on hikes. One of those was somewhat of a misadventure. We picked up a trail map upon arrival, but did not read any of the details. We were wearing sandals and just had some water bottles with us. We found a trail near the point we entered the park. We got out and started toward the trail. However the sign said “difficult”. Just as we were reading the sign, two men came by who had just finished the hike. I asked if it was in fact “difficult”. One answered, no it was not that bad, and it is really a beautiful trail. So we proceeded forward. Turns out he was right about the latter, but way wrong about the former. We quickly descended down a steep bluff on a very rocky trail with many roots and rocks just waiting to trip us up. We ultimately went down about 4 or 5 stories in height which would not have been that bad except for all the rocks and roots. Plus as we walked, the sky got much darker, and before the hike was finished a thunderstorm came along and dropped rain on us. The sights along the trail were beautiful, but we did not get to look at them very much because we were always looking down to watch our step. I did take a few pictures of the rock formations. The rocks look almost man made. There were places where the formations looked like something you see in National Geographics where some ancient temple has been discovered with trees going over the temple ruins. We were fortunate not to twist an ankle or otherwise hurt ourselves. That would have been a hard place for park rangers to find us and then carry us out. We were very happy when we made it back to the parking lot at the end of the trail loop. From now on I will believe the sign when it says “Difficult”. For the next hike we wore better shoes and took a few more emergency supplies in our fanny packs. This time the trail was labeled “Moderate” and was much more enjoyable.

I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from the Peninsula State Park and some of the other parks we have visited