Door County

Our summer ended with a short trip to Door County, Wisconsin. Where's Door County? It's northeast Wisconsin - people always say that Wisconsin is shaped like a person's left hand with all the fingers and thumb kept together - hold your left hand in the air as though commanding someone to stop and Door County is the thumb.

The picture of the huge fire is actually a fish boil at Pelletier's restaurant in Fish Creek (Door County). We went up there for a short trip (which felt even shorter because Steve spent two full days negotiating the sale of our Whitefish Bay home). It was a relaxing, fantastic place to spend a few days. Little Bud mostly just slept in the shower (they didn't have infant beds at the Eagle Harbor Inn, so we put a bunch of pillows and blankets in the shower stall and he slept there). The girls made some beaded bracelets, went swimming, showed Mom and Dad how to canoe and climbed to the top of a really tall tower overlooking Green Bay!

Back to the fish boil - essentially it is this: a bunch of potatoes, onions and whitefish is mixed in a huge cauldron of water - probably 30-40 gallons. The fish oil rises to the top of the water and just sits on the top of the water so the guys running the fish boil pour about 2 gallons of kerosene on the fire and the flames shoot up the side of the cauldron and actually burn away the fish oil on the water's surface. They then pull out the fish, onions and potatoes and serve it with a lot of butter, bread and cherry pie for desert. It was a lot of fun to experience a true fish boil and the meal was delicious!