Events Calendar
In This Section
Most Read Stories
Blogs:
Pets:
Summit teams up with Rescue Waggin' to save dogs
The Heldenfiles:
Songs for an American Day
Patrick McManamon:
Touching on the Browns, Cavs
Akron Zips:
Opponent outlook: Northern Illinois
Browns Bulletin:
Single-game ticket sales begin July 11
Tribe Matters:
Wedge assured of job through season
Cleveland Browns:
Stallworth test showed marijuana
Kent State Sports:
Men's Basketball Scheduling update
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Updated: Free Agency: Another Gone - Apparently
All Da King's Men:
The Obligatory Palin Post
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Wow….Sarah Palin Resigns Governorship
Akron Law Café:
Abraham Lincoln and the Fourth of July
Varsity Letters:
Highland senior receives honor
See Jane Style:
Picnic Wear
Car Chase:
Where do We Go from Here?
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Happy 4th of July!
Ohio Travels with Betty:
Tom asks where to stay while visiting the football Hall of Fame.
Sound Check:
Rundgren fans rejoice!: Second night of AWATS at The Civic added
HRLite House:
Morscruethal Behaviors or Just Lip Service?
Akron Gamer:
Hot link: Best of Nintendo at E3
Washington Island is paradise for Wis. tourists
By Lauren Viera
Chicago Tribune
Published on Sunday, Nov 09, 2008
WASHINGTON ISLAND, WIS.: There's a reason Door County is so popular among weekend warriors: It's lovely. There are antiques to hunt, cherries to pick and fish to boil; there's a breeze, trees and B&Bs. For nature-deprived city folk who've been holed up with cubicle fever all summer, Door County is ridiculously appealing.
But with popular destinations come crowds, and with crowds come traffic. Fortunately, Door County doesn't stop where most tourists do: to gawk at the goats grazing on the roof of Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant, causing a traffic jam where Wisconsin Highways 42 and 57 bottleneck into Sister Bay.
Geographically, it's almost as if Door County's eponymous peninsula is pointing the most perceptive of observers in the direction of something even better than those crazy goats. Positioned 4
miles off the tip of the peninsula, creating a water passage so dangerous, its infamous name — Death's Door — has stuck for centuries, there's a remote mass of land that lures the wisest of those weekend warriors to stow away to its shores.
One caveat: Washington Island is not tropical. But it is a kind of paradise.
What it lacks in coconut palms and white-sand beaches, it makes up for in wild sweet peas and nature trails. In place of tortoises and dolphins, there are lake whitefish and lawyers (fish, not suits). Ordering a mai tai is a faux pas, but every restaurant and pub serves Capital Brewery's Island Wheat Ale, brewed from wheat grown on most of the farms here.
Best of all, Washington Island is still Door County, so there remain the antiques, cherries and fish boils — sans crowds, sans traffic.
Spanning just about 24 square miles, Washington Island is the largest of six islands off Door Peninsula that together make up the Town of Washington. It's the only truly populated one (home to about 700 people) of those that lay in a haphazard archipelago here. The others — Rock Island (1.5 square miles), Detroit Island (0.99 square miles), Plum Island (about 0.5 square miles) and teeny-tiny Pilot and Hog Islands (each about 2 acres) — are, quite literally, for the birds: Rock Island is a deserted state park, perfect for lakeside camping, and the others are bird sanctuaries.
A few miles north, Green Bay and Lake Michigan swirl together along an invisible Wisconsin-
Michigan border. The time zone jumps from Central to Eastern and the waters widen, distancing themselves from the collective islands' notorious natural roadblocks.
In primitive seafaring days of yore, many of the ships that tried to pass between Wisconsin's jagged peninsula and Washington Island — aka Death's Door Passage — simply didn't make it. There are remnants of shipwrecks. Hundreds of 'em. Door County's Visitors' Bureau likes to brag that there are more shipwrecks here than any other section of fresh water in the world.
During the warmer months, divers flock to Death's Door to go deep, exploring what's left of the legendary wreckage. And during the winter, chunky ice caps clutter the passage, reminding passengers on the Washington Island Ferry (also known as Death's Door Ferry) that, in all honesty, the 6-mile crossing is entirely in the hands of the elements.
Life moves slowly here. Cars cruise at a snail's pace, their drivers pausing for scenic snapshots; families of cyclists rule the dozen or so roads that divide the island's interior into a neatly planned grid. Many shops are open seasonally — or when they feel like it. There's one ATM; there are two gas stations. People here stop to smell the wildflowers and take in the sunsets.
And, as is the case on any island, weather dictates just about everything. In September, Washington Island is at its prime, before dropping temperatures and fall color succumb to early winter gales. Especially on the northern and western sides, which face relatively balmy Green Bay, dips in the water are a must.
Pack a picnic and head to rocky, limestone-laden Washington Harbor and Schoolhouse Beach. Cut through the woods on a trail from South Shore Drive to the remote Sand Dunes Beach, bring a book and a blanket and plant yourself against the shelf of sand overlooking Lake Michigan. There will be no crowds, if there's anyone there at all.
Washington Island is virtually flat, which makes for spectacular vantage points. Climb the 184 steps up to the Mountain Park Lookout Tower in the center of the island — its highest point — and green patches of farmland and forests meet the blue-green of Green Bay to the north and the deeper blue of Lake Michigan to the south.
It's remote; it's gorgeous.
It's hard to believe that this is the same state — let alone country — famous for birthing grown men who, for four consecutive months a year, sport giant foam hats shaped like wedges of cheese.
Not that cheese is any less important here. This is Wisconsin, after all.
The best place to sample cheese on this island, or any number of organic meals, is the restaurant at the Washington Hotel, home to the Washington Hotel Culinary School. Located just east of Detroit Harbor, a quick five-minute drive from the ferry dock, the 104-year-old building sits regally at the rear of an oversized grassy lot punctuated by a pair of horseshoe pits and Adirondack chairs.
Chilled cucumber soup, smoked whitefish crepes and asparagus quiche are among the selections that grace the ever-changing menu prepared by chefs-in-training here. The setting, like the food, is delicious. Across the road facing Detroit Harbor is a tiny private dock for hotel and restaurant guests. The intimate inn, with eight quaint, tastefully restored rooms sharing two luxury baths, is one of the least expensive lodging options on the island.
Then again, everything here, from the restaurants to the resorts, caters to budget-conscious Midwesterners . . . with a Scandinavian accent.
Shortly after the island was incorporated as part of Washington Township in 1850, an influx of Icelandic fishermen arrived; today it's the largest settlement of Icelanders in the States. Evidence of that is everywhere, from Field Wood Farm's Icelandic pony rides through the woods to the deliciously filling barkram pankaka (Icelandic crepes stuffed with yogurt cream sauce and cherries), served at the Sunset Resort on West Harbor, which is run by the same Norwegian-Icelandic family that opened it in 1902.
Scandinavian culture is further preserved at the Jacobson Museum, named for Jens Jacobson, the pioneering Dane who immigrated in 1881 and built a museum on the island's aptly named Little Lake in 1931. The island is also home to one of only six stavkirker (stave churches) in the country. The one here, nestled against the trees across from the Trinity Lutheran Church on Town Line Road, is modeled after the original Borgund, Norway, stavkirke built around 1150.
Like a small city-state, Washington Island has managed to create a wealth of culture for itself on a relatively small plot of land, with an even smaller population. Sievers School of Fiber Arts offers weeklong and weekend classes in handcrafts; Red Barn Park and Gislason Beach host outdoor music and theater events during the warmer months; elsewhere are the Trueblood Performing Arts Center and a handful of fine-arts galleries.
And then, of course, there is the land itself. Acres of it. It's flat, but vast, best explored in a car or on a bike.
If you've got neither, there's always Washington Island's Cherry Train Tours, which are stationed at the ferry dock and lead tours of the west side packed with mainland day-trippers. The tour makes a mandatory stop at the Double K-W Ostrich Farm on West Harbor Road, where a tiny zoo offers photo ops with the leggy creatures and then some. (For a more literal taste of K-W's residents, check out the menu at the Ship's Wheel Restaurant just west of the ferry dock)
Back in mainland Door County, there's considerably more wildlife. And antiques and cherries and fish boils. And civilization, which isn't always a good thing. Next time, after passing Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant on that crowded main road, keep going. Head for the Washington Island Ferry at Northport Pier. Don't look back.
WASHINGTON ISLAND, WIS.: There's a reason Door County is so popular among weekend warriors: It's lovely. There are antiques to hunt, cherries to pick and fish to boil; there's a breeze, trees and B&Bs. For nature-deprived city folk who've been holed up with cubicle fever all summer, Door County is ridiculously appealing.
Get the full article here.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
