travelogue: door county

mr. happy stuff and i have never had a chance to visit door county and we’d always heard such nice things, so this past weekend, we finally packed up and went to the great northern thumb of wisconsin. we had a wonderful weekend! on friday night, we went to the hands on art studio to enjoy “adult night”. it’s this cool art studio in the woods where you can choose from many different art forms (painting ceramics or metal, doing mosaics, glass fusing, metal working, pottery wheels…) and just make art to your heart’s content! on friday nights they have “adult night” where you can bring wine or beer (if you want), they have live music, and the studio fee is only $6 per person for the whole evening (from 6:30 to 10:00). we chose to explore the metalworking studio. mr. h-s made a really cool set of house numbers for us. i wanted to make a wreath for the front door, but i ended up making a piece of abstract art that i’ll hang on the front door instead. here’s the cool part–i got to try welding! my only regret is that i have no photo of me welding to prove it, all i have is this piece of metalwork, but it was so cool!

afterwards, we were still a little hungry, so we decided to stop in for a late pizza at sonny’s. i may have to go back there again if we visit again. their pizza was some of the best i’ve had recently. my half was topped with a blend of spinach and ricotta and the crust and mozzarella were just perfect!

saturday, we spent the morning exploring fish creek and egg harbor. in the afternoon, we took our bikes on the ferry over to washington island and biked around the whole island. one of my favorite spots was schoolhouse beach which had smooth, white stones (biggish ones) instead of sand. there was a sign posted that listed a $250 fine for removing rocks, so i took pictures of them instead. we also visited the washington hotel. we had considered staying there, but then we realized that we’d have to pay an extra fee to take our car over to the island and we weren’t sure we wanted to spend the whole weekend up there, so we might have to pay for the ferry to take our car back and forth several times, so we stayed somewhere in fish creek (with nice people, but not so great rooms. they were clean and cozy, but the bed was less than stellar and the bathroom reminded me–in a bad way–of one in my grandparents’ old house) with a better location. while we were on the island, i at least wanted to see the hotel, so we biked there before heading back to the ferry dock. it is a luxuriously simple hotel. i now aspire to stay there. or maybe to someday indulge in their prix fixe dinner ($65 each–ouch!). since i couldn’t afford either a room or the dinner, i chose to ask if they could make me one of their sandwiches to go. the cheapest (and most intriguing) one that i had seen on the menu was made with butterkase cheese and ginger-rhubarb jam. the woman at the front desk said they could make that one up pretty quickly, so i ordered one. she brought it out, wrapped in clear cellophane, perfect for my bike bag (i was dreading trying to figure out how to squash styrofoam into that tiny space!). we headed back to the ferry dock so that we wouldn’t miss the last one out for the evening, and i ate half my sandwich while we waited to leave. yuuuuum. it was awesome. the bread alone was worth it.

when we got back on the ferry, the guy behind us was telling a story about how he’d been on the schoolhouse beach and had pocketed one of the rocks. the tourbus driver had asked him to put it back saying, “sir, this isn’t the 80’s anymore. we can’t just exploit nature whenever we want.” or something to that effect. cracked me up.

when we got back to town, we decided to experience the local phenomenon of a fish boil. i was still pretty full from my cheese and jam sandwich, so i opted to not get the fish (mr. h-s thought it was poor planning on my part, but i informed him that my planning was impeccable–i am certain that i enjoyed my sandwich way more than i would have enjoyed the fish boil!). it is quite an event to behold–giant black kettles over wood fires and a grand finale of leaping flames and billowing steam and smoke. we found that we could actually split the meal fairly evenly between us with each of us eating the things the other doesn’t care for. i had the coleslaw and the cherry pie, he had the fish and potatoes (ok, i had a few bites of the potato–i do like them!) and we each had a piece of white bread and both avoided the dark rye slice.

that night, one of the state parks had advertised that they were the darkest spot in door county and were therefore a perfect viewing spot for the perseid meteor shower, so we drove out to watch them. there was a huge line to get into the park (which flabbergasted mr. h-s), but eventually, we made it in, parked, and found a spot to lie down on the grass. other than the fact that it quickly became clear to us that we had worn insufficiently warm clothing, this was one of the highlights of the weekend. there weren’t tons of meteorites (we heard someone say in a disgusted tone, “they’re not shooting stars! they’re meteors!” as we passed by), but there were at least two that crossed over the entire sky before disappearing. and lots of other smaller ones. it was even more fun than fireworks. everytime one went across the sky, the whole crowd of people gasped and said, ‘there’s one!’ on the second sky-crossingly large one, some people even clapped (which made mr. h-s giggle and say, ‘yay god!’ i thought that god probably likes to get applause every now and then.) i think my other favorite overheard quote was a father telling his child, “shhh! you have to be quiet so we can hear the stars!” it was just fascinating people-watching in the dark.

on our last morning, we decided to have breakfast at the white gull inn. i had cherry pancakes, cherry juice and i ordered a slice of cherry pie to go (when i finally had some room in my stomach when we got home, i tasted it and it was divine!). then we packed up and headed back home. on the way out, we noticed all of the different businesses who like to use “clever” spellings — like the “chal-a hotel” or the “val-a motel” or, my groaning favorite, “laurie’s country calf-a” or mr. h-s’s favorite, “bea’s ho-made jams and jellies” (mr. h-s: (giggling) i just keep picturing provocatively dressed skanky women, all named bea, making jam!).

all in all, the weather was perfect, we ate some delicious food, we biked around, we welded stuff and we had a fantastic weekend. you should go sometime.