August 6, 2018 West Bend to Fish Creek, WI

It started raining last last night and continued into the morning.  It was a light, nagging rain that didn’t hamper our departure procedure too much.  Good thing I kept my Niagara Falls poncho from our trip a few years ago.  It came in really handy today.
The rain lightened up as we pulled out of the campground at 10:00.  Our drive today is 161 miles to Fish Creek.  We took the back country roads to Highway 43.  The country roads had no traffic as we passed many huge dairy farms over rolling hills.

We haven’t traveled Highway 43 to Door County since 1987, so everything looked vaguely familiar.  We finally drove out from under the rain clouds and the skies remained cloudy.  We stopped at a wayside to give Auggie his delayed morning walk and were on our way.  We missed our turn to Highway 57 just south of Green Bay, but quickly found a place to do a U-turn and got back on the road again.  We continued north to Fish Creek via Highway 42 approaching the first of the towns on the Door County Peninsula—Sturgeon Bay.
We crossed over the Sturgeon Bay Canal that links two bodies of water–Green Bay and Lake Michigan.
We were reminded that this area was known for its fishing years ago by this old commercial fish tug that sat just outside of town.  
Many things looked the same and it’s good to know some things don’t change.  There were a couple new roundabouts, a few new wineries, and new businesses like the Door County Trolley.
Door County is also a big snowmobiling area in the winter and this sign was another reminder of that white stuff that we moved to Florida to avoid.  
We made our descent into Egg Harbor.  There were a few new establishments in town, but some of the more familiar places were still there.

We didn’t really notice a lot of traffic on the road coming up here, but here in Egg Harbor is where everyone seemed to be.  It was a busy place!
We continued on to our campground just north of Fish Creek.  Entering the town of Fish Creek, you have to descend into town on a steep hill which brings you to the main intersection in town with a right-hand turn at the bottom of the hill.  Bob didn’t want to maneuver the trailer through town, so we took the back roads to our campground.  We arrived at Fish Creek Campground at 1:30 and checked in.
Auggie was happy to be here and anxious to get out of the truck and explore his new surroundings.
The campground is nicely maintained and has spacious sites.  We were assigned site #503.
The clouds cleared and the sky turned to blue, the temps stayed in the mid 70’s, and there was a great breeze.  We set up camp and were ready for 4 days of exploring.  I took the opportunity to do some laundry since it was available here and cheap.  Bob needed a little “down time” to relax after the drive today, so I sat and did some reading while waiting for the laundry to get done.  The campground was quiet with many people out and about doing their “tourist thing”.  More campers checked in, but the campground was not full by any means.  I assume weekdays are less busy than weekends.  They always are!   This campground has a central grassy area with a building that houses the laundry and restrooms, a shuffleboard court, playground, and basketball court.  
[I mentioned earlier in my blog, that we spent about 25 years camping and boating in Door County.  In the 1980’s, we camped in Peninsula State Park (our favorite) with tents and then a pop-up tent camper.  When we switched to boating in the early 90’s, we kept a boat of one size or another first at the Quarterdeck Marina in Sturgeon Bay, then at Sister Bay Marina, and finally at Alibi Dock Marina in Fish Creek for many years.  Every weekend, from May 15-October 15 for about 17 years, we would drive to Fish Creek, hop on the boat, and go somewhere for the weekend and on longer vacations.  The last 5 years before we left Wisconsin to live in Florida in 2008, I would spend my summers on our boat in Fish Creek.  Other ladies that I came to know did the same.  Some were teachers like me.  Bob would work during the week and come up on Thursday and go home on Monday morning.  My friends and I would bike, do some sightseeing, shop, and hang out until the guys came up.  I was in charge of having the boat clean, stocked up, and ready to go when Bob got there.  It was a fabulous time in my life and I consider myself very lucky to have been able to do it.  I didn’t have a car up there, but I could bike to any place I wanted or needed to go.  When the weather wouldn’t allow Bob and I to go out on the boat on the weekends (Green Bay can get pretty nasty at times for boating), we stayed around the area and explored Door County by car.  Over the years, we learned all the ins and outs of Door County and all the cool little places to go and things to see.  In other words, Fish Creek became our 2nd home and we knew it very well.  I am anxious to see how things have changed.  I’m sure it will bring back some great memories of those times gone by.] After the laundry was done, we sat outside and enjoyed our new surroundings.  We had a cocktail before our dinner of pork chops on the grill and took our walk with Auggie before it got dark.  We returned to the camper and relaxed as the smell of burning campfires permeated the air.  Tonight we can sleep with the windows open due to the cooler evening temps. Tomorrow we’ll begin our exploration!