Door County, WI
Okay, so here’s the thing: I can admittedly be a bit of a gym rat. As a member of the a cappella group Straight No Chaser, I am on the road roughly half of the year performing and recording. While this means that I am away from my wife and children, it does mean that I have, on most days, a bounty of time on my hands before our evening show. And I am one who loves to spend as much of this time as I can in the gym.
But every once in a while, I am in a place where a gym is not really an option. I happened to find myself in just such a place last weekend in Door County, WI. Now if you are one who follows a fellow member of my group, Randy Stine, on Twitter (there are over 40K of you, so I figure I have a pretty good shot you do), then you have no doubt heard of and seen pictorially the natural beauty that abounds there. And since my wife and I were there for Randy’s wedding, we figured what better tribute could we offer than to rent bikes and take in as much as our legs would allow.
We were staying in Bailey’s Harbor and, with the help of Yelp!, we found a brunch spot in Fish Creek across the peninsula. It took me some convincing of Emily that we could do all of this on rental Treks, but once we set off, we both knew we had made the right decision. First off, no state does wild flower fields like Wisconsin. The colors were amazing (and I don’t even see colors all that well!), and strewn among them were the most quaint farm houses you can imagine. It was a great ride, and when I sat down to brunch, I felt that I had earned my omelet and home fries.
After brunch, we set off through the Peninsula State Park and on to the town of Ephraim, taking in amazing lighthouses and views of Eagle Harbor. Again, the only word that comes to mind when describing these Door County villages is quaint- mom and pop shops and diners are everywhere, and on Saturday morning of Labor Day, there wasn’t a spare seat to be found. For our next part of the jaunt, we headed back across the peninsula on the longest part of our journey; a little over 15 miles. Now, County Q was not as scenic as the rest of our ride, but it was interesting how much the climate changed as we got back to the water on the eastern shore. The air was thick with fog and the refreshing breeze became a steady headwind, but most importantly, for two non-bikers, our butts were telling us that this ride needed to come to an end! So it was with great excitement that we arrived back to Bailey’s Harbor to return our bikes and get ready for the wedding festivities.
The real moral of the story: sometimes slow and steady wins the race. At no point in our ride were we really pushing it (OK, there was one hill that I thought was going to kill me), but when you are out for four hours taking in all that nature has to offer, that’s perfectly fine. We had a great day, saw some sights, had a lovely brunch, and learned more about Door County than I possibly could have sitting in my car. As Emily is always encouraging, get out there and explore! You never know what you’ll find.