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Nancy's dad kept telling us that we needed to come up and see the place, so we finally decided to take him up on it. He was right, it is a very nice place. Plenty of water activities and shopping, plus the fact that it really still is the country, makes it a great place to get away from everything. I'm sure we will be going back to visit again, especially since it's only a 9 hour drive. Sure that's a long way, but think of the all the other places you would wind up after 9 hours of driving from St. Louis, ( Dodge City Kansas, Kearney Nebraska, McComb MS, Amarillo TX, Akron Ohio, or Knoxville TN), and I think you'll agree that Door County beats them all. The picture at the top of the page is the backyard view from Larry and Sue's friends, Claude and Mila's home in Sister Bay. Claude owns the only funeral home from Washington Island to Green Bay.
The Gang Well, let's see. Nancy's family consists of her father Larry, his wife Sue, and their son Allen. Then there's the foster kids they also take care of: Linda, Tammy and her son Justin, and the brother-sister trio of Jonathan, Claudia and Alec. Of course, never far from Larry & Sue are their old Southern Illinois friends Burr & Shirley. This year, Burr & Shirley had two of their grandkids with them, Courtney and A.J. They were all good kids and we all had tons of fun together. Even toodles, the most obedient dog in the world, had fun too.
Sue, I wholeheartedly apologize. Somehow I managed to leave you out of all the pictures. Probably because you were always busy with food, or kids, or food covered kids, or kids bugging you for food, or one of those other things that kids bug you for. Please don't disown me for forgetting you.
Fishing Fishing for salmon on Lake Michigan was unlike any other fishing I've ever done before. Larry's friend Al took us out for the day. Larry apparently returns the favor when Al winters in Florida near Lake Okeechobee. Al's personal boat, The Sportsman, is a 1972 Bayliner Saratoga, and before you laugh at the age of this boat, let me tell you this is an exceptionally well taken care of craft. Al also runs mate on the Fox1 charter during the summer season in Door County. If you're looking to catch fish in Door County, I would suggest these guys. We put in at Sturgeon Bay and rode through the Sturgeon Bay canal out to Lake Michigan. The canal allows travel from Green Bay (the body of water, not the city) to Lake Michigan and did not exist until several years ago ... at least that's what everyone thought. When the canal didn't exist, a proposal was made to build one. Environmentalists balked at the idea. As usual, the environmentalists were squashed, but during the excavation engineers discovered that the canal actually did exist hundreds of years ago. Sedimentation over the years had filled it in. As for the different way of fishing ... we had eight lines out at any one time. Most were fishing somewhere around the 80 foot level in water that ranged from 100 to 180 feet deep. We landed 9 keepers, 4 shakers (non-keepers), and lost 4 other large ones. One of the lost ones I managed to reel in to the boat, but Al accidentally knocked the hook out with the net. He probably went around 12-15 lbs. We caught them all on various colored spinners which looked more suited to bring in a small whale. I guess this is probably not a whole lot different than deep sea fishing, but it's a whole lot different than the 'stand in waist deep water tossing a crackleback with a 5 wt. fly rod' method I'm used to doing. It was a exciting, and little tiring, to reel these big fish in since they were out on about 200-250 feet of line. To be honest though, this almost didn't seem like fishing. Al rigged the lines, set the depths, netted the fish, then cleaned them once we got back. I never actually touched a fish except to pull them out of the cooler for him to cut up. I did get to drive the boat a little and talk on his VHF radio. Talking on the VHF reminded me of my old towboat days ... Lake Michigan charter pilots bitch and cuss as much as towboat pilots. We had our catch smoked at Bearcats in Algoma, WI ... I highly recommend Bearcat, he does up a right nice fish. By the way, I caught two salmon of the size I'm posing with ... which Al estimated at 20 pounds. Yes, I know, it's hard to tell it's me ... but it is ... the Yankees t-shirt is a dead giveaway.
A full size picture of the lighthouse can be viewed here.
Iola, WI Antique Car and Swap Show 2002 Iola, WI car show 2002. I believe the cost was $6.00 per person, and plenty of reasonably priced good Wisconsin food inside. Deep fried cheese curds were the best and for $2.00 more you could get a cardiologist on standby. Larry told me there would be a large number of cars here and he was right. I think I might have been to a larger show, but if so, it wasn't much larger. My estimation is somewhere between 1000 and 1500 cars. We were also there on the first day of the event, so I'm sure there were more that showed up later. Jonathan enjoyed having his picture taken with the cars, so you will see him in almost every picture. You might even catch A.J. and Allen in a couple too. Descriptions are listed from left to right below each row of cars. Fun Cars
Rare Cars
Really Old Cars
Similar Cars owned by family members
My personal favorites
Accommodations We camped at Quietwoods South campground outside of Brussels, WI on the southern end of Door County. This is not to be confused with Quietwoods North, which was started by these same owners, but sold some years ago. Quietwoods North has apparently gone downhill since the sale. The owners at Quietwoods South were some of the nicest people in the world. Larry and Burr each had brand new 2002 Montana trailers with 3 slide outs. Each has a bedroom, bathroom with shower, kitchen area with table, and a couch and two recliners in the living room area. You'd be surprised at the room inside. Our trailer was a 1989 28 ft. Jayco. A nice trailer, but not as nice as the Montana. Asking price on ours was only $13,500, but I'm sure Quietwoods RV in Brussels will make you a deal. Larry and Sue's rig is on the left, ours is on the right.
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