A Drive in Door County, Wisconsin

We are currently at Tranquil Timbers RV Resort, an Encore Park. This is mostly a seasonal park as many here have decorated their sites for summer. Most of the lots here are huge and the lot we are in usually goes for $55.00 per night.  Thankfully our Passport America membership knocked it down by 50 percent. The only reason we came this far up the peninsula was to experience Door County, an area we heard was a "must see" in Wisconsin.. Tranquil Timbers RV Resort is conveniently situated on a bluff overlooking the waters of Green Bay and is adjacent to Potawatomi State Park.

On our first full day we picked out a driving loop of over 100 miles in our car to explore all that Door County could offer visually. We started by heading up the western side of the peninsula and headed across one of the several bridges over Sturgeon Bay into the small town of the same name. We plan to explore the town of Sturgeon Bay later since we are so close to it but this day the plan was to drive completely along the coastline of Sturgeon Bay to the waters of Green Bay.

This area is cottage country as this area is without a doubt  a summer vacation boater’s paradise. We passed countless waterfront lots and slips of motorboats and sailboats. As we doive along the coastline we were reminded of parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as it was similar to this part of Door County. That is until we got to Egg Harbor where the congestion of cars and people picked up dramatically. We stopped to look at their quaint harbor but decided it was much too crowded to enjoy a stroll.

Further north we passed into the town of Fish Creek and then into Ephraim where we found both towns also were hustling and bustling with people. We were surprised to see so many folks during the middle of the week but considering summer is about over for everyone here maybe it shouldn’t have surprised us. We stopped in Ephraim and had lunch on a grassy knoll in their harbor area. The color of the water was gorgeous but the pictures didn't do it justice because this was a hazy day. Next up were the towns of Sister Bay and Ellison Bay.

These towns were more laid back,less crowded and more designed for those looking for a little more solitude. At the northern tip of the peninsula is the small town of Gills Rock and just west of there is Northport which is nothing more than the ferry landing where tourists can catch ferries over to the islands off the peninsula. We stopped at their visitor center to see the exhibits and then walked on the rocky beach. No sand here as most of the beaches were of fragmented limestone where we and a family on the beach had fun trying to skip stones on the water.

As we headed south we tried to drive along the eastern side of the peninsula along the shore of Lake Michigan but most roads along this side don’t allow us to see much along the shoreline as we were mostly driving along fields of corn. I joked with Sharon that this was preparing her for what we will see once we enter Illinois. We did find a small park near the town of Bailey’s Harbor that allowed us to experience the power of Lake Michigan as it was pretty windy this day. The kite boarders sure were enjoying this windy side of the peninsula as they ripped to and fro across the waters at fairly substantial speeds.  It looked like a lot of fun but one sport that fortunately for our bodies isn’t on our bucket list…

We drove back across the lower peninsula through the town of Sturgeon Bay and back to the park. In retrospect the drive was enjoyable but not as scenic as we had had hoped.  Because it is cottage country nearly every inch of shoreline is occupied with little or no turnouts for water viewing.  Therefore every park we did find was quite crowded yet we are still really glad we experienced  the beauty s here in Door County, Wisconsin.