Door County Camping Weekend

After a year off, we resumed our fall camping tradition, going back to one of our favorite spots, Door County in northern Wisconsin.

As we were setting up our tent, Kai spotted a frog...

Which he later caught. We convinced him to let it go.

The next day, Kai wanted to go to the nearby beach. The water was cold, so he was very tentative about wading in.

But it didn't take him too long to make the plunge and start swimming. You're not supposed to be able to swim in Lake Michigan in October, so this was bonus swim time.

After lunch, we went on a bike ride. Peninsula State Park has great trails through the woods. The one we went on wasn't too difficult, but it did have some hills which would have challenged Kai before. But we had graduated him to a bigger bicycle and it definitely made it easier for him.

At the end of the trail was a frozen custard stand which was a nice reward for a good ride.

Kai said he actually enjoyed riding his new bike, so maybe he will want to get out and go riding more often.

In the evening, we had Korean barbecue for dinner.

And then we made s'mores which Kai particularly enjoyed.

After dinner, we walked back to the beach to play some card games at the shelter. After our last game, my wife notice a bright light on the horizon and exclaimed, "What is that? Is that the moon?"

And when we walked to the shore to get a better look, we saw the biggest, brightest moon I've ever seen rising in the horizon.

It was a spectacular sight! Even Kai wanted to take a picture of it.

The next morning, we got up to use the bathroom just at sunrise. The sun came up behind the land, but we saw some nice color over the lake just to the side.

We got a good fire going to cook breakfast. Kai's favorite part of camping is the fire.

After taking down our tent, we found an apple orchard where we were able to pick our own.

We filled up two bags, one with Honey Crisp to eat, and the other with Cortland to make pies and apple sauce.

Fall is our favorite time to get outside, and this was the perfect fall weekend for a good camping trip. I think Kai enjoyed it, too, even with very restricted use of electronics.

Full Weekend at Door County

We returned to Door County in Wisconsin for our annual fall camping trip.

It’s always exciting to get there to put the tent up. Kai wanted to play with the campfire.

He was especially looking forward to making s’mores.

And they turned out great!

The next morning we went to Eagle Tower. If you squint, you may be able to see Kai and my wife about a third of the way up the 75-foot structure.

My knees told me that the tower was taller this year, though Kai had no trouble hiking to the top. Here’s the view from the top. Please pay attention to the little island that you can get a glimpse of on the right side of the photo. That is Horseshoe Island (more on that later).

Next, Kai wanted to go to the beach. My wife volunteered that I would go in the water with Kai. ☺

The water was really cold. I mean, it was REALLY COLD. Even Kai thought it was cold, and he is a penguin when it comes to going into cold water. Nonetheless, he still wanted to walk all the way out to the boundaries of the swimming area.

Next, we wanted to try kayaking.

After our experience kayaking the Skokie Lagoons, we felt like taking on the challenge of kayaking in a bigger body of water. The man who rented kayaks told us of a few places we could go to. He said that it would take 20 to 30 minutes to kayak to Horseshoe Island. As we only wanted to go out for an hour, we thought that was perfect.

We rented a kayak large enough for the three of us, though Kai only sat with his back to Mom and did not paddle.

Here you see us with our destination in the background. This picture was taken when we had already paddled out nearly halfway. We still had a long distance to go.

We learned that kayaking in a large body of water like Lake Michigan (or technically, Green Bay) is much more difficult than kayaking in the small, calm waters of the lagoon back home.

Even though it was a calm day, there seemed to be just enough wind and/or current that it was challenging to stay on course toward our target. (Or perhaps, my wife and I were just not in sync and kept steering off course). Anyway, we would keep going too far to one side, then over-adjusted to the other. We were zig-zagging instead of going straight.

The choppy waves from passing motor boats did not help either, and were a bit scary as the thought of capsizing in that cold water was not attractive.

The final issue was more mental. In a small space like the lagoon, you can see every tree go by so you can tell that you are making progress. But in this big open space, we passed few landmarks and the island appeared to be far away no matter how hard we paddled. It felt like we were making no progress at all.

With nary a break, with our arms aching, we finally approached the island. But we had taken so much time to get there that we turned around without the planned rest on the island. We wanted to get back in our allotted time as the man told us that if we were late, they would send someone out after us.

The trip back was probably even harder than going out. But we made it! It was an accomplishment. And it may have satiated our desire to kayak for a while.

After a break for lunch, we got our bicycles out to ride on one on of the beautiful trails in the State Park. We had tried this last year but Kai tumbled off his bike in the first few minutes and we did not ride for long. We were hopeful of going further this time.

Kai did much better this year.

As incentive to keep going, we set our destination as the frozen custard stand just outside the Park entrance, about four and a half miles from our campsite. It was about the same distance as the loop we usually ride back home.

Kai generally rode well, though he often rode too slowly to make it up the hills.

But we achieved our goal and enjoyed some big sundaes.

Riding back was a bit more challenging. Kai was tired and I had to keep encouraging him to pedal faster.

“Keep going!”

“Pedal faster!”

He did not like my encouragement.

“STOP SWEARING, DAD!”

Oh, brother. I could just imagine what passing bicyclists must have been thinking if they heard Kai yelling that to me.

But we made it back to our campsite. The 9-mile round trip was probably the longest we had ever biked together.

And once we relaxed in the tent and played games, Kai was back to his happy self again.

We capped our day off by going into town to experience our first fish boil.

A Door County tradition, the fish boil involves a huge cauldron of salt water being brought to a boil.

Potatoes and onions are first put into the pot, and later fresh water whitefish steaks are added. At just the right moment, the boil master tosses kerosene into the fire beneath the pot, setting off a huge blaze that causes the water to boil over, dramatically carrying off the fish oil that had collected on top.

The fish, potatoes, and onions are pulled out and carried to the kitchen, where they are served with a generous drizzling of butter.

The fish was really tasty, though the service at the restaurant left a lot to be desired.

Kai is not one for regular fish (he likes shellfish) so he had the ribs, which he said was really good as well.

As you might imagine, we were very tired and slept pretty well in the tent that night.

The next day, we took a ferry over to Washington Island.

The boat ride took half an hour. And then we explored the large island.

One of the highlights was a neat-looking church. Before you get to the church itself, you walk on the “Prayer Path” through the woods.

Along the path are numerous Bible scriptures.

And then we arrived at the wooden church.

It was beautiful outside and in.

We also went to a farm museum. Here Kai is feeding a goat.

We had a long drive ahead, so we couldn’t stay on the island too long. We grabbed a take-out lunch to eat in the car while on the ferry.

Back on the mainland, we drove home, stopping only to buy some cherry pie to have later.

It was a fun weekend. We had done a lot. Frankly, I didn’t expect to be able to do all those things. We wouldn’t have been able to in years past.

And so it was a great weekend in many ways.

And best of all it portends more good times ahead.

Door County Camping Trip

We went on our annual fall camping trip this past weekend.

For the last few years, we have been going down to the area of Starved Rock State Park, southwest of Chicago, right here in Illinois. But this year we wanted to try someplace new, and made the 4-hour drive up north to Door County in Wisconsin.

Door County is well known as a popular summer retreat for many Chicagoans, but this was our first visit. It is famous for its woods, waters, charming towns, fish boils, and throngs of Chicagoans who visit.

I was especially looking forward to the trip, particularly as it followed a busy week of work that had me flying to Mexico City for a few days. And though Kai asked me what hotel I stayed at down there during my “vacation,” rest assured that the business trip was no vacation.

And so I was glad to put all that behind me as we drove up through Wisconsin.

Our destination was Peninsula State Park, which is located on the beautiful shores of Green Bay (the bay, not the town), about three-quarters of the way up into Door Peninsula.

We were able to pitch the tent before it got dark, then started a campfire and grilled hamburgers before roasting marshmallows.

Here you can see Kai’s attempt to roast two marshmallows at once resulted in one being burnt to a crisp while the other not roasted at all.

Though on his next attempt he was much more successful and he was able to enjoy s’mores.

We were all in good spirits the next morning.

Kai found a tree at our campsite that was perfect to climb on.

Our plan for the morning was to go bike riding. Last week, I could only show you pictures of Kai riding his bike in a parking lot, as we were not able to actually ride on any trails. But with many beautiful trails at Peninsula, my wife and I were looking forward to a great morning riding through the forest.

But don’t bother scrolling down to see a photo of us bicycling. There is no such picture.

Shortly after we started riding, we came to an area where we could get a good view of the bay. My wife stopped and got off her bike.

Kai was riding behind her. He started yelling that he could not stop, and leaped off his bike while it was still moving faster than it should have to be jumping off. He tumbled to the asphalt surface, scraping his knee and doing more serious damage to his psyche.

His previous bike had foot brakes, and he apparently was not yet used to the hand brakes on his new bike. Admittedly, they are a little difficult for his small hands to squeeze. Apparently, he did not think he could use his brakes so he jumped off instead.

I cleaned the blood off his knee and told him that he would be fine. He did not think so.

“I DON’T EVER WANT TO RIDE THIS BIKE AGAIN!”

I asked him to practice squeezing his hand brakes. He said he could not squeeze it, though it looked to me like he wasn’t trying at all.

I tried to get him to get back on the bike so that I could teach him how to put his feet down to slow down if he needed to, rather than leaping off the bike.

“I’M NOT GETTING ON THAT BIKE!”

My wife and I tried to reason with him, telling him that he was able to ride so well the week before. It was just one fall but he knows how to ride.

Eventually, after much screaming, most of it on his part, he got back on the bike and we rode a little farther. But every time we came to a small hill, he stopped and got off the bike. We finally decided to ride back to the tent and forget about bike riding for this weekend.

None of us were feeling good. My wife and I were certainly let down, to put it mildly, from our hopes of a fun morning on the trails. Kai was feeling drained from his own emotional trauma with the bike.

At that point, I was wondering if we would have any fun at all that weekend.

After a short break, we drove into the nearest town, Fish Creek, where we walked around town and browsed a couple of shops.

After a lunch of fish sandwiches and chili, we drove to see more of the area, going all the way to the tip of Door Peninsula to where the ferry departs for Washington Island.

We made it back to the State Park in time to go to the beach. The water was cold, but Kai never seems to mind that. We waded out to the end of the roped off area, but even out there it was still too shallow to actually swim.

Still, Kai enjoyed splashing around.

We grilled up chicken for dinner, and quickly ate it and put everything away so that we could drive up to Sven’s Bluff to watch the sun set from up high.

Alas, by that time, the clouds were rolling in. The view was still great from up high, but there was no sunset to be seen.

That night, it rained quite heavily for a few hours. A bit of water leaked into our tent, mostly on my side, but we stayed dry for the most part.

The most remarkable thing was that the boy who is normally afraid of all storms when he is in the safety of our house had no anxiety about being in a tent during this storm.

The next morning, after breakfast, we drove around to other areas of the State Park.

We had some great views from up high. A few trees were turning color and we imagined how spectacular the sights would be in a couple of weeks.

The most popular destination at the Park is Eagle Tower, a 75-foot structure that towers over Green Bay.

We climbed to the top and enjoyed the great views.

And then worked our way down the narrow stairs.

We went back to our campsite and packed up our still-wet tent and other gear.

And then we drove over to Bailey’s Harbor, a little town on the Lake Michigan side of the Peninsula.

We browsed a few more shops, had lunch near the shore of the lake, and stopped now and then to take in the charms of this town.

It was time to get back home.

Things didn’t all go according to plan. I guess I should have learned by now that they often don’t.

But looking back on the weekend, we still had a lot of good times. Enough to make us want to return to Door County again. We want to see more of the area. We want to experience a fish boil.

And we want to ride more of the bike trails.

Maybe next year.