Just got home from a fun weekend to Door County, Wisconsin (the peninsula in the northeast of the state) with Millie, my friend Kate, and her kids Olivia and Bradley. After arriving late Friday night, we awoke to a perfect sunny day on Saturday and decided to head to my favorite picnic spot on the Lake Michigan side, Cave Point County Park, which features a terrific limestone beach and a number of sea caves in the rocky cliffs. Olivia had fun "rock hopping" (above), while Millie had a good swim in the cold, clear water.
I was also able to capture this quick video before Millie splashed all over the camera lens!
Kate and Bradley decided to play it safe and stay on shore.
After our beach-combing, we ate our picnic lunch and Bradley decided to ham it up with my hat and give me a "home boy" look--
We had a great campsite at Egg Harbor Campground. It's an old KOA that's now run by very friendly owners. Every site was shady and the park had a nice nature trail through an old cherry orchard that was fun to explore. Millie and the kids had a great time together.
On Saturday night, we went to the town of Fish Creek for a traditional Door County fish boil at Pelletier's. The town is very quaint and great for a summer evening walk.
The kids were fascinated by the fish boil and asked the boil master a ton of questions about the process. Basically, they boil a basket of freshly-caught white fish along with another basket of red potatos and onions in large iron kettles over an open fire. As the fish cooks, it's oils rise to the top of the pot, so to get rid of it, the boil master throws a couple cups of fuel into the fire to make it quickly triple in size and cause the pot to "boil over" (thus pushing all the fish oil over the top). The cooks then place a long pole through the pot handles and pull the baskets of food out. These fish boils used to just occur once on a Friday night as a celebration to the week's end, but they are now so popular with tourists, that a number of restaurants do them every 30 minutes all evening on both weekend nights (good thing, because the kids wanted to watch the boil over a couple more times after our dinner!).
On Sunday, we decided to take Highway 42 home along the shore of Lake Michigan. The winds were blowing from the southeast and causing some fog along the coastline, so we didn't get to see much of the lake, however, we did come across this spectacular field of sunflowers in full bloom near Algoma (I only had my point-and-shoot camera with me, but did the best I could to capture it). Quite a wonderful end to a great weekend!
