Finne's Follies: A Look at Door County

Door County is famous for its cherries.

In its heyday, during the 1900s, Sturgeon Bay, where we camped, was a bustling ship-building town and for some time was rolling out one new ship every five days. But that industry is no more -- at least in Sturgeon Bay. Now cherries rule. Everywhere you go, you'll find businesses that make and sell all things cherry. Among other things, we bought cherry jam, cherry butter, cherry pie (of course), cherry sausage...and, yes, cherry wine.

Besides cherries, Door county also has a number of vineyards. Mark and I visited six of the eight area wine-makers, tasting a wonderful variety of wines from both imported and local grapes as well as cherries and other fruits.

In spite of the "homemade" labels on many of the foods, though, it was still difficult to find products free of the typical soy isolates, fructose, and preservatives. I passed up many items that I would have purchased had they been truly "home" made. It's probably a good thing because I would have spent my entire food budget on non-essentials. Nonetheless, my pantry is well loaded with carbs and sugars, and I'm sure I'll be chiding myself later.

One of the things I wanted to do while in Door County was to visit a dear sweet lady whom I've known for the past twenty years or so, Florence Thoms. On September 1, she turned 101 years of age. She's just as sharp now as the day I met her. Florence lives in an assisted living complex in Sister Bay, which is one of the northernmost towns on the peninsula. She spends her days walking (with a walker), drawing and painting, and volunteering wherever and however she can. She loves God and is looking for the Second Coming of Christ with great joy. Last year she broke her hip and had to have a hip replacement. It's amazing to me that they would do that for a one hundred year old woman, but they did. I asked her how she was feeling. She said, "I feel great (big smile); I have no pains." What a blessing it is to know her. She's a true inspiration. When we got ready to go, Flo walked us out to the curb.

On our way to Sturgeon Bay, we developed a bit of an electrical problem under the dash. We started smelling the unmistakable acrid "burning wire" smell and had to pull over and check it out. But once the radio stopped working, the smell went away for a while, so we decided to keep going and investigate it later. Coincidentally, the place where we pulled over was right next to a hardware store, so I thought this might be a good time to buy some fire extinguishers. The only one we had in the coach was empty and so old that it couldn't even be charged anymore. I bought two for the inside (front and back) and one to keep in an outside compartment. Mark was able to rewire the radio, which he discovered was not wired properly by the genius who installed it, and now we have music again...and hopefully no more electrical fire worries.

Since we left our house in Chaska, we have had no cable TV (gasp!) We've been carrying around all the parts for a month, and Joel and Jesse helped Mark install the satellite dish onto the roof of the coach while we were there a couple weeks ago. But every time Mark tried to set up the receiver with Dish Network, he ran into failure problems. Finally while we were here, he got on the phone with their tech support. We got nearly all the way through the setup process only to learn that the receiver unit that Camper World sold us was bad. It was returned to Camper World by the previous buyer and they were informed at that time that the unit would have to be returned to the factory. Instead, they put it back on their shelf and sold it ... to us. A new receiver and we'll be back in touch with the world again. (I'm still deciding whether that's good or bad.)

Our stay at Tranquil Timbers was a nice one. It's a beautiful park. But it's designed more for smaller trailers and tent camping. There are only a few sites with full hookups and most of the roads inside the park are very narrow. Traversing them with a 38-foot motorhome was tricky enough, not to mention dragging behind us another ten feet of car and trailer. Fortunately they had a wide open area for larger rigs like ours. But, again, those sites had no sewer.

We will probably not come to this particular park again, though I would highly recommend it to someone with a smaller rig.

There's still no word on our basement air conditioner, so tomorrow morning we are packing up and driving down to Livingston, Texas, to get our driver's licenses and pick up our mail. After that, we'll be back in Minnesota for a week or so and then off to Spokane. I'll update the itinerary once we have our camp site reservations made.

P. S. If you're deciding between Madeline Island and Door County for a camping trip or visit, my recommendation is Door County -- hands down.

Some more Door County photos...