Category: Features
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It hits us when we’re home alone and we shut off the TV, revealing the eerie silence of an empty house. Sometimes you feel it when you drag the garbage to the curb at night, or for the rurally inclined, to the burning barrel in the back yard. The feeling, the sense, that someone else […]
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Living the Life Less Ordinary: The Red Cup Coffee Shop
From an outsider’s perspective, living on Washington Island is a difficult thing to fully appreciate – especially if you’re one of those city-born people, accustomed to all the luxuries of an urban setting, who thinks that to move there would constitute drastic, even crazy, behavior. I traveled there this past February, however, to meet with […]
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Connecting Two Worlds: The Washington Island Ferry Line
The distance from Northport pier, on the northern tip of the Door peninsula, to Washington Island’s Detroit Harbor is just a few miles, but in so many ways the two may as well be worlds apart. Between the shores run the foreboding waters of Death’s Door, which earned its moniker in the days when sailing […]
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Snowshoeing provides the means for truly discovering those places on both our cognitive and paper maps. For those who love being outdoors and for those who aren’t sure, snowshoeing affords the freedom from groomed ski and snowmobile trails and is a great way to stay in shape through the winter months. Romantic images of explorers […]
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I’ve seen you do it, and I do it, too: pull over to the side of the road, jump out of the car, and attempt – most often in vain – to capture the essence of a big old wooden Door County barn with a camera. My particular favorites are those slightly or even largely […]
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A Slice of Americana: Friday Night at “The Outdoor”
In much of America, drive-in theaters are abandoned relics of a bygone era. Decrepit old snack bars crumble in overgrown parking lots, still pointing valiantly at the bones of a decaying screen. They are some of the saddest sights on the American landscape, the old speaker posts standing like tombstones marking the graves of youth […]
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“Grudge” – the Enduring Rivalry between Sister Bay and Baileys Harbor
The annals of sport are filled with storied rivalries. They’re called clashes, battles, and feuds. In Door County League baseball, one of the best is referred to simply as the “Grudge.” It’s Sister Bay versus Baileys Harbor – Bays versus A’s, North versus South. And in its heyday, it featured as much intensity as an […]
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Chambers Island: An Escape to Simpler Pleasures
On the horizon, most directly across the waters off of Fish Creek and Ephraim, lies an island that vacationers to Door County rarely visit. Chambers Island is situated approximately 7.5 miles northwest of Fish Creek, west of Horseshoe Island, and 11.5 miles northeast of Marinette. Chambers Island is about 3,200 acres and boasts a 350-acre […]
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The Leap: A Photographic Essay of Door County Weddings
With its serene atmosphere and changing seasons, Door County has become a popular location for destination weddings. Beyond choosing among the numerous venues within the county, couples have also found alternative ways to bring the area’s traditions into their ceremonies and receptions, be it in a field of flowers, on a century-old farm or along […]
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“There’s no business like show business!” “Two planks, a board, and a passion!” “The show must go on!” No other art form has traditions like those of the theatre. The stories are legion of how, in the midst of impossible conditions, the curtain always goes up. Actors tease that if they don’t show up for […]
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The Cosy Transformation from Bustle to Nestle
Door County in autumn smells like freshly brewed coffee tickled by the sweet bay breeze. Adorned by a cozy scarf and cotton knit poncho, I sit at a coffee shop and enjoy the comforting bliss of the nonchalant after-season, the post Labor Day sigh, the oncoming off-season for renewal and refreshment. Sitting outside, the cedar […]
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A Subterranean Exploration: Caves of the County
We often think of the earth we walk upon as solid and unchanging. Nothing could be further from the truth in Door County. Caves, sinkholes, open joints and fractures are everywhere in the carbonate rocks of the Door Peninsula. Bedrock here is known as the Silurian-aged Niagara Dolomite. Born from warm sub-equatorial waters 425 million […]
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Indulge: A Retreat to the Peninsula’s Spas
Relax, breathe, and melt into some very talented hands in Door County. Whether for a bachelorette party, honeymoon, or personal time, Door County now has quite a few options for special body treatments. Three spas, Lucia Luxury Day Spa, Lori’s Spa and Nail Studio, and The Spa at Sacred Grounds, provide a menu of different […]
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Destination Learning: Diverse offerings in the Arts, Crafts, and Humanities
Door County is known throughout the Midwest, nationally and even internationally as a premier vacation destination. The natural beauty, outdoor activities, boating, shopping and thriving arts and crafts bring millions of visitors to the peninsula each summer. For many visitors to Door County, the peninsula represents the ultimate in idleness. Time spent in Door County […]
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Fyr Bal: 50 Years of Celebration in Ephraim
Each year on the weekend closest to the summer solstice, the Village of Ephraim undergoes a transformation. Normally a tranquil lakeside community, known for its pastoral atmosphere and deep sense of history, during this weekend the village unfolds into a flurry of activity for ‘Fyr Bal’—one of Door County’s best known, if least understood, cultural […]
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Door County’s Artistic Identity: The Galleries and Artists of the Peninsula
Drive down any highway, street, or back road on the peninsula and you’re likely to notice an uncontested truth about Door County: galleries are everywhere. A quick phonebook count brings up 107 all together, though that number is probably low. Each day, it seems, a new gallery opens its doors, an existing one introduces a […]
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What is it about the imaginary line that circles the globe half way between the equator and the North Pole? All the way around the northern hemisphere, the line that demarcates the 45th parallel holds the viticulture secret to the growing, harvesting and crushing of grapes to make wine. From the Bordeaux fields of France […]
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March maple syrup, spring asparagus, vine-ripened summer tomatoes, sweet corn, fall squash…the farm markets of Door County are harvesting the bountiful crops for every season. There are dozens of “off the farm” and “on the farm” markets in Door County, and they offer both specialized crops and the entire gamut of vegetables and fruits. All […]
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In Stride: A runner keeps pace with the peninsula’s terrain
I consider myself a fortunate person to be able to witness the dawn of a new day on the peninsula from 75 feet above Eagle Bluff in almost total silence. While getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go for a run isn’t for everyone, the serenity infused by the view from Eagle Tower […]
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Those families with a long history of fishing are known well on the peninsula. Names like Teskie, Weborg, Hickey, Henriksen, Saunders, Johnson, and a number of others have kept the commercial fishing business alive through the many fickle seasons such a lifestyle brings. Door County commercial fisheries now ship whitefish and chubs to markets in […]