Ports des Morts (and the Stinker Bay Packers)?

We think Door County is a real cherry of a place!

As we travel around the country on our “really getting to know” a state tour we sometimes speculate about the places that we might put on a “really wanna go back to” short list. Door County, Wisconsin (the northern part of the peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan northeast of Green Bay like the thumb of a palm-down left hand) is going to be a strong candidate to make that list.

With great scenery, cool breezes, rocky shorelines, corn fields, round-topped silos, cherry orchards and lots of quaint little towns Door County has an East Coast look with a Midwest feel. We spent a week encamped at an RV “resort” on the outskirts of the village of Egg Harbor, which is on the Green Bay (referring to the body of water, not the city) side of the Door Peninsula.

Lake Michigan

Looking west over Green Bay...

...and east over Lake Michigan.

The drawbridge at Sturgeon Bay

Lavender on Washington Island

Downtown Egg Harbor

Green Bay (the water, not the city) is part of Lake Michigan but separated from it by the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin, the Garden Peninsula in Michigan and several islands scattered between the two peninsulas. The bay is about 120 miles long and 10-20 miles wide. The Wisconsin peninsula got the name Death’s Door from the treacherous channel crossings that separate the Green Bay from the main body of the lake. Presumably, somewhere along the line, someone at the local visitor bureau thought it might be a good idea to drop the “Death’s” part of the name.

Nicolet (and friend)

Searching for a passage to the Orient French explorer Jean Nicolet was the first European to cross Lake Michigan, in 1634. Instead of finding China as he had hoped Nicolet stumbled instead on Wisconsin; landing on the southern end of the bay near the present-day city of Green Bay. Coincidentally, but notably, Tex’s fiancé Rachel Simon is a descendant of Monsieur Nicolet!

According to Wikipedia Nicolet named the bay he “discovered” La Baie des Puants (the bay of the stinks) because his Indian guides called the natives that lived in the area a derogatory word that roughly translated as "stinkers". However, later French explorers, like Jacques Marquette, found this nomenclature rather odd and so began to call it instead Baie Verte (Green Bay), possibly because of algae in the water or, perhaps, because the landscape seemed relatively green compared to the Montreal area where their journey had begun.

In the aftermath of the War of 1812 the U.S. built a fort where the Fox River empties into Green Bay. A fur trading village developed in the vicinity of the fort and, after settlers began to pour into the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s, the village's population boomed and the borough of Green Bay was formed in 1838. The City of Green Bay was incorporated in 1854 and it has grown slowly but steadily to the current population of just over 100,000 that makes it the third-largest city in the state (behind Milwaukee and Madison and just ahead of Kenosha). Oddly, Green Bay is the county seat of Brown County.

Today Green Bay (the city) can rightfully claim to be the “toilet paper capital of the world” (because of its many paper mills). However, the Chamber of Commerce may prefer the nickname “Title Town”, a reference to the Green Bay Packers and the team’s 13 professional football championships dating to 1920. That’s the most titles won by any pro football team and includes four Super Bowl championships (tied for third-most).

Door County was not settled until the 1850s and then mostly by subsistence farmers/fishermen. However, by the late 19^th century wealthy residents of Milwaukee and Chicago had discovered it as a vacation spot and tourism has been a mainstay of the economy ever since; although there is still some commercial fishing and a considerable amount of corn, soybeans and cherries being grown on some pretty good-sized farms in the interior portions of the peninsula.

In fact, there are really two distinct landscapes. The two main roads on the peninsula run along the two shorelines, passing through idyllic towns with boats in the harbors and lots of restaurants, cherry orchards and art galleries. However, when you cross from one side of the peninsula to the other on one of the myriad county roads the landscape is mostly fields of corn and soybeans.

Initially the tourists came by boat but since the 1920s the peninsula’s been reached mostly by automobile.

A whopping 94.6 percent of the 27,500 residents of Door County are non-Hispanic white and more than 27 percent are over the age of 65 while barely 16 percent are 18 and under. The median income however is a surprisingly modest $50,000, which is slightly less than the statewide median of $52,000. President Obama received nearly 53 percent of the Door County vote in 2012, almost exactly what he got statewide.

The view from the highest point in Green Bay

On our first day in the area we traveled an hour or so south from Egg Harbor to Green Bay and took the “deluxe” tour of the Packers Lambeau Field. We are both pretty ambivalent about the Packers; not haters but certainly not fans. That said; the tour of the stadium and the on-site Packers Hall-of-Fame was a great, first-class experience. The team runs upwards of 50 tours per day and more than 15,000 people per month pass through the stadium led by well-versed, professional tour guides that reinforce the Packers mystique and brand as a small-town, fan-owned franchise that is distinct from and more “authentic” than any other in the NFL.

Throw in the on-site Packers Hall of Fame with its slick introductory film and you have an impressive, carefully choreographed, Proctor & Gamble-esque package that markets and brands the Green Bay Packers franchise. 

Check out this video I shot during the tour.

It was interesting to observe the parts of the story the team wants to emphasize, and those they do not. For instance, Bart Starr got lots of adulation for his years as the quarterback of championship teams but there is scant mention of his nine years as head coach when the team won just 40 percent of its games.

Taking the Lambeau Leap

It seemed to me that there were four or five people who got top billing. One was the founder, Curly Lambeau, a local high school star that had to drop out of Notre Dame due to a serious case of tonsillitis. To scratch his itch to play football Curly formed a semi-pro team in 1919 that was briefly sponsored by the meat packing company where he worked. The “Packers” then joined the NFL at its founding and Lambeau managed to keep the team solvent in a backwater like Green Bay by creating a non-profit corporation and selling ownership shares to the fans. He ran the team until 1950. The team is still “fan-owned” and periodically offers ownership shares for sale that have no value, pay no dividends and cannot be sold. The last offering of these shares was in 2012. 

There was a guy on our tour that I would guess to be about 40 who owns some team stock. He said being a stock owner is relatively easy compared to being a season ticket holder. He has been on the season ticket waiting list for 21 years and he said his only realistic chance of getting tickets is if the stadium seating is expanded. 

The #1 Packer?

Perhaps the top billing of the Big Five went to Vince Lombardi, the 60’s era coach that took the team to five NFL titles and the first two Super Bowl championships.

The third member of the Big Five that surprised me was Ron Wolf who became general manager in 1991, hired Mike Holmgren (the fourth member of the Big Five) as coach, and traded for the fifth, Quarterback Brett Favre. Interestingly, Wolf was the only one of the Big Five that did not eventually leave the Packers for another team.

There were certainly plenty of others getting plenty of love; Paul Hornung, Reggie White, Aaron Rodgers, etc.

All in all the “Lambeau Experience” was interesting and entertaining and gave me a new appreciation for the Packers, not so much as a football team but as a business and a brand.

By getting the Packers out of the way early we were able to focus in on Door County.

One day we took two ferries, drove across one island (Washington) and circumnavigated another (Rock) on foot. We also toured a beautifully-restored light house on Rock Island, saw a mature and a fledgling Bald Eagle at their nest, reached the eastern-most spot of land in Wisconsin, ate at a Fish Boil (click here for explanation), visited a second light house on yet another island (that we walked to) and watched a full moon rise over Lake Michigan. Wow, what a day!

 

Reaching out for easternmost Wisconsin. In fact, we were so far east on Rock Island that the cell phone time lost an hour.

The Cana "Island" Lighthouse (if you can walk there is it really an island?)

And, if all of that was not enough, we also saw the famous goats grazing on the sod roof of a restaurant in the village of Sister Bay.

The “goats on the roof” is on the list of Top 100 Things To Do In Wisconsin. It’s an eclectic list that we have steadily been chipping away at but have no expectation of completing (we’ve only “checked off” a little over a dozen so far).

On another day Betsy biked into town and really got to know Egg Harbor while I rode my bike to, through and around Peninsula State Park; Wisconsin’s oldest and largest state park. That night we attended an Agatha Christie play "The Hollow" in a beautiful outdoor setting that overlooks Green Bay (the water, not the city).

The next evening we biked into Egg Harbor to listen to an excellent trio of folk singers perform in the beautiful Egg Harbor City Park.

We liked the group (which, some of our readers may be interested to know, is fronted by Carleton College graduate Katie Dahl) so much that we paid to see them perform again the next day, which was Friday which, of course, meant Friday Fish Fry. The only question though was; "which fry?" 

After much, much teeth gnashing, doubt and indecision we settled on Mike's Port Pub & Grill in Jacksonport; yet another wonderfully quaint little town on the lake side of the peninsula.

On a bike ride one day I had stopped in at a small art studio and chatted up the owner who gave me numerous recommendations for places to eat. Mike's was one of them. A half-dozen or so additional potential Fish Fry venues also made the shortlist,  Then, through an elaborate but largely opaque decision-making process, Betsy settled on Mike's.

We are keeping track of our various Friday Fish Fry venues and will rank them when the Wisconsin tour is finished. It's going to be difficult. The fish at Mike's was great, but the fish at every fry has been great. Betsy gave Mike's high marks for its German potato salad. The wait (just to sit down at the bar and then for the food to come) was long and the place, a small, run-down bar was packed with locals; all factors that will work in Mike's favor when the judgement day arrives. Probably the biggest knock against Mike's is that we did not like any of the beers they had on tap and had to drink non-local beer from a bottle.

 

Mike "invented?" this clever contraption to assist those like us that like to eat at the bar.

Speaking of beer selections, en route to Mike's, we stopped for some locally-produced refreshment at the Door County Brewing Company and, while it was a very nice venue with good beer, we decided we prefer Shipwrecked, the brewpub in Egg Harbor.

After the fry at Mike's we caught the last half of another performance by Carleton College alumnus Katie Dahl and her group in the barn-like venue of an art gallery near Egg Harbor. Indoors (sort of) without the wind noise and with better acoustics she was even better than the night before.

We wrapped up our stay in Door County with some chores around the "house", checked another Top 100 thing off the to-do-list with a trip to Whitefish Dunes State Park, checked out the famous boat house in Ephraim where generations of marina users have left their mark and ate supper at Fred & Fuzzy's Bar & Grill, a place that many consider to be one of the best sunset views on the peninsula.

As I understand it the concept is that, if you have harbored a boat in a slip at the marina in Ehpraim, you can paint the name of the boat and the date that it was moored there on the wall of this boat house. However, it seemed that maybe some of the graffiti writers had a different concept. Prior to the construction of roads in the 1920s many Door County visitors arrived on steamers at this dock.

It was a great westerly view over Green Bay (the water, not the city) from Fred & Fuzzy's; but it was not a great evening for a sunset.

After our week in Door County there is no question that it has rocketed to the top tier on our list of favorite places we've been, not just in Wisconsin this year but in our travels around the country in recent years. To quote a line from a Katie Dahl song; "Straight from the mighty hand of God to the top of his thumb." Of course, we have lots of favorites and, when the dust has finally settled on this trip, Bayfield County and Madison will probably give Door County a good run for top billing.