Door County Anniversary Trip, Day 5

Day 5: Sunday, June 7, 2015

Day 5 of vacation started out as another rainy day. We gave ourselves a chance to sleep in, then went to Brew coffee shop for breakfast and Silly Goose General Store just to look around. We took a short walk down to Island Orchard Cidery North of Ellison Bay. We learned some new things from the tour and enjoyed the free sampling here.

By then, the rain cleared up, so we went and borrowed bicycles from the tourist center off of Main Street. It had been so long since either of us had ridden a bike, so we stayed off of the highway and rode a couple miles to Rowley’s Bay. It was turning out to be a beautiful day, so we just enjoyed doing this new activity together.

Once we returned the bikes, we began driving down to Fish Creek for dinner. We stopped at the Wetlands on the South side of Sister Bay for a short walk and a letterbox. Perhaps wetlands aren’t the best place to visit after a rain and in the late spring when it’s so buggy! We made our walk fast, then continued on to Fish Creek.

We had heard from several people that we needed to experience a traditional fish boil while we were here, and the White Gull Inn was recommended to us. We made reservations the day before, and showed up early this evening. They began preparing the food (pouring it in the big pot) around 5:15, and “boil over” was at 5:45. We sat outside and watched them go through the whole process.

Fish boils were designed to feed lots of sailors quickly and for little cost. They start with pouring the potatoes into the water, along with a lot of salt. Once those have had a chance to boil, they pour in the white fish, throw kerosene on the fire and light it up so that all the fish oil spills out. It’s quite the presentation, and the guy cooking for us was quite the expert. He has been working there doing this job for 19 years!

We really enjoyed the experience of it all and were glad we did this. It was $20 per person, and that included fish and potatoes (and seconds were optional), cole slaw, a bread basket, and cherry pie with ice cream for dessert. I don’t know how other fish boils in the county differ, but we did enjoy our experience at White Gull Inn!

Afterwords, we drove back to Ellison Bay and watched the sunset from our car by the water. (It was too buggy to be outside here!) As the sun made it past the cloud line and before it disappeared under the lake, it lit up the sky a gorgeous pink color. It was a wonderful, laid back vacation day, for once! 🙂

Day 5 Wrap Up: Biked 8 miles, hiked 2 miles, found 3 letterboxes.