Boy we have been having so much fun I’ve forgotten to update the site each night. Ok so some nights I’ve simply been to tried, alright already, to lazy.

I think I’ll just have to talk about what we did that I can remember. All done

ok so I can remember some things. One day we got up and decided to tour the many quaint harbors in Sturgeon Bay. We had done most, but drove through them because they were simply to many people out and about without mask, and well we didn’t want to push our lucky. We have managed to do all this traveling with minimal contact with folks, ok by this I mean, minimal contact without masks or 6’ distance between folks. YES we have on occasion been with more folks than we liked but with masks on. In any case. The many harbors and quaint shops really are wonderful places with so much to see and do.

There are a surprising number of wineries and distilleries on the island, like more than 15, who knew. The distilleries are mostly whiskey. The wineries were a mix, and let’s not forget the cheese outlets.

We did a few cheese outlets (get ready family and friends to be invited over to try them out with us). There are so many wonderful things we picked up. Oops almost forgot the high number of coffee roasters here was well and Christmas shops, ok so you get the idea. Plenty of places to visit and see.

We were in Sturgeon Bay for a week, and that was just enough time, to see damn near everything.

here are a few pictures of what we’ve seen.

Let’s see, we haven’t yet had any outstanding meals, which is a bit disappointing. Some of this is our fault. We, ok I haven’t gone out to eat much and we haven’t picked the best places ( this is by accident) nor have we picked the right meals. I do some if this has to do with the help or lack there of at many of these places, and the fact they cook differently? Our best meal so far, except for the extra salt / spices was at a german style restaurant; http://www.themillsupperclub.com

I had a great tender well cooked steak, just way to much seasoning for my liken, which by the way, wasn’t noted on the menu, and my lovely wife had Wiener schnitzel which she said was tasty just way to salty for her tastes. We start with an order of cheese curds and it looks like I’ll have to finish this tonight, time to check out of the hotel and head to our next stop, midland, mi. So after dinner we went down to the really cool park with the game tables and such, all of which is right on the waterway, which is where I took the photo of the draw bridge from as well as many of the boats, ships, yachts (not sure what these folks classify their crafts as). After this it was back to the room for the night. See you all tomorrow.

Hi folks. We ended up with another easy day, some of this because we wanted to and some because some of the things we wanted to do are closed. That’s fine, that’s what tomorrow and Tuesday are for.

Our day started with a visit to the local marine museum.

http://www.dcmm.org/sturgeon-bay-museum/

A fine museum and a great tour of a tug boat with an amazing history.

http://www.dcmm.org/exhibits/sturgeon-bay/tug-john-purves/

Here are a small handful of photos from today / tonight.

Here is a interesting fact. The largest Great Lake is Superior at 31,700 sq. Miles, and the WHOLE state of maine is only slightly bigger at 35,310 sq miles. Just images driving from York Maine to Limestone, Me by boat! And that’s how big that Lake is.

So as you can see from the photos we had a full day and a good day. Tomorrow has us visiting some of the harbors we drove thur Saturday, because they were to busy to stop at, and were hoping most folks will have gone back home tonight.

The day may not start until I got a massage. I’ll call first thing in the morning and see when I can get an appointment.

So for now, “that’s all folks” have a great night and week.

Oh, supper was at

• https://bricklotpub.com
  

She had a Ruben sandwich with onion rings and she said they were both great. I had a cheeseburger with an egg and bacon, with house chips, or so they said, I think they seemed like they came right from a bag of chips? The burger was good, tasty, and cooked as I request it- somewhat or a rarity these days.

Hello folks. I hope you all have as great day planned as we do. We will be exploring the island and several of the harbors / village’s.

One of the 4 harbors we got in today. They are all small but damn are the beautiful. A few were real crazy with everything from car shows to shopping there seemed to be something for just about everyone. I will say they were all way busier than we expected. Yes it’s Saturday and everyone is out and about but it seems like the tourist season had past and was going to be slow, nope not the case.

So these are a few pictures of the areas we stopped at. One was baileys harbor, which is where the car show was. Unfortunately it was REALLY BUSY and my wife wasn’t comfortable around all those folks none wearing masks. Yes I could have gone, explored and taken more photos but I decided to stay with my wife, it’s the right thing to do.

from here we went on to egg harbor and 2 more. While all were very scenic and all I didn’t take pictures of all the places we went today. We may go back Monday when it shouldn’t be so busy and we can explore more and more comfortably.

for tonight’s meal, we went with Thai from Dan’s kitchen😂 Come on, that’s funny.

http://www.dan-kitchen.com

My wife went with Drunken Noodles with shrimp and a few Crab Rangoon’s and I went with, drum roll please, sweet and spicy chicken with A pile of white rice.

She said it was real good, for me it was ok . . I’ve had better😂 After we eat we went out for a nice walk and a few photos.

After this we called it a night. Night J’fer, night Swana, night Bud, night all. See you all tomorrow.

Boy when you don’t have to know what day it is, it’s pretty easy to forget. We weren’t sure what today would bring. My wife was looking forward to some down time, but it turns out not the whole day in the hotel.

I started my day off with a brisk 20 minute walk to a local bakery to get some breakfast. Well that didn’t turn out as i planned. The bakery recently closed their retail space down for good (and hadn’t yet up-dated their web site noting this change). They were still baking and had a sign on the door exposing the changes and were you could get their goods.

As I headed back to the hotel I stopped at a gas station and asked were locals now got fresh baked goods. The young lady gave me the names and general locations for a few she knew of, so back to the hotel to get the car and search them out.

– https://www.scaturos.com

This was the first (and only one I went to), it had an awesome selection of baked goods to choose from. I went with a pecan roll / bun, a raspberry white chocolate scone, a Bavarian filled long John and a blueberry danish. This seemed like enough for now. So the scone got 2 thumbs up, the long John got 1 thumb up (as I suspected it wasn’t real Bavarian filling) but it was still good. The others we’ll have later.

So later happened and so far the blueberry danish gets thumbs up.

After this I got freshened up and went out for awhile and checked out the area some more. I was also told that she decided not to stay in the room all day and she would be ready to go out exploring with me whenever I got back. I drove around a bit to get the lay of the land and such, and headed back some hour – hour and a half later to see if she was ready . . . She was.

She asked if I found anything fun or exciting while out and about. I said downtown look very quaint, clean and appeared to have enough stuff to check out, so we did.

https://www.sturgeonbay.net/shop

A very nice downtown for sure. About as long as Lisbon street (maybe 5 or 6 blocks) with all kinds of stores and not many vacant store fronts, maybe 3 or 4, which is outstanding compared to many other areas and COVID and all.

All this looking and shopping made us a bit hungry so we started looking around for a place to get a late lunch, we ended up at

http://doorcountyfirecompany.com

I asked out waitress what was great, popular with the locals, she said everything- I asked her to narrow it down a bit. She did, and we went with an oversized pretzels / cheese to start with and had a pizza to split. Pretzel good choice, the pizza that folks rave about, not so much for me. It was a Ritz cracker like crust with a sweet sauce and fun cheese. While both were good, the pizza was just different enough for me to be . . Ok but nothing I’d order again, my wife said she liked it just fine.

After her lunch we headed back to our hotel. Oh I forgot to mention we did all this within walking distance of the hotel, which, yes, we did, and that meaning, walked all of this. While a bit harder for my wife, it’s good for she to walk just as much as she can to help with her stamina and all. She’s real good about saying “enough is enough”. She knows her limits and tries not to exceed them, as she is the one the pays the price when she does push a bit to hard.

Back to place for some rest and discuss what was next. She mentioned while looking through the local tourist guide she saw a coffee roaster or 2 she would like to visit, along with a few shops near them. So after 30 minutes or so rest, we headed out to check them out. Damn you’d think we’d be better at phoning to check and see if things (like their hours) have changed (knowing many folks don’t get to their web sites with these changes) but no not us / me, we just head out and find out when we get there that they “close early now” “until further notice”, good thing there are generally other shops in the area to visit. These coffee roasters and yarn shops will just have to wait until tomorrow, along with an Apple Orchards and winery or 2.

In any case back to the hotel for the night- after a walk around the area with my wife. I had done some of this walk myself over the past few days and decided to show her the town, she like it a lot, both the waterfront and side streets.

See you all tomorrow.

Boy the days are starting to run together. This morning started out pretty slow with no real agenda other than getting to our next stop . . . Sturgeon Bay. We will be here for a week, so this will be nice send easy on us. A good time to relax and still get in plenty of sights. Easy because it’s about an hours drive to the other end of the island, so getting in multiple stops per day should be easier and less tiring.

We did stop along the way to take some photos of a wild Lake Michigan. Out there on the horizon you can see the local ferry coming in from the storm. It’s much bigger than it looks here, the ferry that is.

Just went for a short walk and here are a few photos from the area near the hotel.

Tomorrow will be a lazy day for the Misses and I’ll likely go exploring a bit. Try to get some good photos and see what the area has to offer in general.

Good morning everyone. I hope your days have been fun, pleasant and plentiful. Day 7 brings us to Beliot, WI. And a few stops for more fun. These will include Mars Cheese Castle and Holler Apple Orchards for sure. So lets get started.

First stop will be Mars Cheese Castle about an hours drive southeast from the hotel.

1. https://www.marscheese.com/
   

Yes this is another one of those thousands of tourist traps that pop-up along America’s highways and byways. Just the kind of place we love. Here you’ll find a good assortment of cheeses both local, regional and some from away. A better assortment of jams, jellies, crackers, honeys, candy, soft drinks and more, and a Much bigger selection of wines than I would have expected. Many of the wines had great little signs with them telling you about the wine, what it will taste like, what it goes good with for a meal as well as dessert, all very helpful information for my wife (I don’t drink wines). Helpful in picking out wines for friends and family. Yeah, we help with their daily overhead costs before we left. From here we went on to Holler Apple Orchards- here we weren’t as happy. This was the 3rd or 4th place that has had to scale back big time because of lack of help and in some case local and state rules about what they can and can’t do or offer. So here the kitchen was closed because of lack of help, which was real sad because it gets 5 stars for their oversized and delicious sandwiches. They had NO apples in crates to pick them and only frozen apple cider, who in the hell sells frozen apple cider at an apple orchard (besides these folks).

https://www.appleholler.com

They did have an awesome fresh bakery with Apple fritters, turnovers and other pastries that looked incredible. I say looked because we didn’t buy any. I surprised myself and didn’t get any, yes folks even I can eat only so many pastries- which is sad. The other thing going on, or not going on as the case might be, was apple picking – not. They did apologize to folks for the lack of things to do, and they let us know that it was in-part because of 2 tour buses that had stopped by and stretched them thin on customer service and what they could cover or offer with the current staffing. Disappointed and ready we decided to head back and see what we could find along the way back to our hotel.

I did find a couple of interesting things to take photos of (I’ve got to figure the easiest way to get photos from my camera to the iPad so I can share). We also found a vegetable stand along the way and picked up some tomatoes for sandwiches. This turned out to be the end of the day for us as far as sightseeing which was fine. A big week ahead in Sturgeon Bay and this also gave me time to clean and organize the car a bit more.