In my Creativity Club (you should join us! It's completely FREE!) this week we took a mini vacation to one of my favorite places to be: Door County!
These days as we enter the fifth month of the strange days caused by COVID19, some of us are finding that we really don’t feel comfortable traveling right now. I’ve been particularly missing my sisters. I usually try to see them at least once a year since moving to Mexico, but it doesn’t look like this will happen in 2020. They have ended up living in the town where we used to vacation when I was growing up. Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin is the entry point to one of Wisconsin’s many popular vacation spots, Door County.
I decided to share a mini vacation centered on having some fun with the place.
Here's a super quickie bit of background:
Door County, Wisconsin is a popular tourist destination. It is the land mass that separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan along Wisconsin’s eastern shoreline. There is a dangerous strait between the tip of Door Peninsula and Washington Island. and was called "Death's Door" by Native Americans, the Ho-Chunk and the Potawatomi due to the treacherous conditions during storms. Later it was shortened to just Door County because having the word death in your name is going to impact your marketing efforts, lol.
From 1865 through 1870, three resort hotels were constructed in and near Sturgeon Bay at the base of the peninsula along with another one in Fish Creek further up. More started appearing further up the peninsula.
By 1895 fruit horticulture was aggressively promoted. Not only farmers but even "city-bred" men were urged to consider fruit husbandry as a career. Some did. Cherries do particularly well here
Because our grandparents were a completely different breed of people than our generation, cherry picking was marketed as a good summer camp activity for teenage boys in return for room, board, and recreation activities. One orchard hired players from the Green Bay Packers as camp counselors. They do that today they'll get all the young cherry pickers they can handle!
Today Door County is Known for:
Tourism - especially draws people from Illinois and the metro chicago region.
Visitors enjoy beaches, boating, parks, shopping and participating in the myriad array of cultural activities normally offered.
It's also known for Shipbuilding. First for building many of the big boats of the great lakes and more recently ships for the salty oceans.
We had fun coming up to speed on this lovely destination and then spent a few minutes capturing the essence of 6 photos in three minute sketches.
I grabbed these images off of several of their tourism sites. Check out the Hello Door County website.