While having a drink at Bark & Brew in Green Bay, we mentioned to the owner Tara that we’d be going up to Door County the following day.
Door County is a peninsula that stretches northeast from Green Bay out into Lake Michigan. We had a couple of places we planned on visiting, but thought we’d drive around and see what there was to do. Tara gave us a long list of things to do in Door County which ended up being extremely helpful.
We ended up hitting most of the places on her list, all of which were excellent recommendations. If you’re planning a day out in Door County, here’s a list of 7 places to eat, drink, hike and cliff jump (if you dare!) We’ve also provided a map at the end showing the locations of all these activities to help you plan your day out.
1) Renard’s Cheese
Seeing as Door County is in Wisconsin, there had to be a cheese place on the list. Sure enough, our first stop was Renard’s Cheese.
Inside, there are all kinds of handcrafted cheeses, with several free samples available for tasting.
We’d brought along our dog Truffles who understandably wasn’t allowed inside. I don’t actually like cheese, so I waited with her outside while Shae went in to get her dairy fix.
Shae’s discovered the joy of cheese curds since we arrived in Wisconsin on our 50 state road trip and this gave Truffles an opportunity to share that joy.
Renard’s Cheese has two locations – the one we visited in Sturgeon Bay and one in Algoma. The Algoma location offers cheese tours, so that might be a better option if you’d like to go on a 30 minute tour.
Address: Renard’s Cheese, 2189 County Rd DK, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235
2) Simon Creek Vineyard & Winery
What goes well with cheese? Wine, or so I’ve been told anyway. So the next stop on our Door County day out was Simon Creek Vineyard & Winery.
For $5, you get to try five wines of your choosing as well as a stemless wine glass, so it’s a great value experience. They have a good variety of different types of wines – the ones I tried were:
- American Merlot
- Untouchable Red
- Speakeasy Red
- Door County Cherry
- Chocolate Port
Shae tried the same wines as me, except she opted for the Untouchable White rather than the Chocolate Port.
We’d called ahead to ask if Truffles would be allowed there and they said it was fine for her to be outside. She’s only ~10 lbs and fits in a special doggy backpack, so we asked if she could come in and they agreed.
If you want to relax at the winery a little longer and have a drink, there’s a large outdoor area you can wander round, plenty of seating, a small lake plus all the vines.
Address: Simon Creek Vineyard & Winery, 5896 Bochek Rd, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235
3) Cave Point County Park
It was about 1:45pm by this stage, so we were ready for some lunch. We therefore made our way to Cave Point County Park with our packed lunch.
Cave Point County Park is on the edge of Lake Michigan, so after having lunch we made our way to the water. The park has several caves you can view from the water, so it’s a popular place to go kayaking.
While walking along, we stopped to watch a large group taking it in turns to jump off the cliff edge into the water below.
It looked like fun, but there was no way we were going to do that. Well, there wasn’t any way until Shae plucked up enough courage to do it herself later on. Someone had to look after Truffles, so I oversaw her efforts (AKA I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself).
Once she’d dried herself off a little, we walked around the park some more. There’s a long rocky beach area where loads of people have been practicing their rock balancing skills.
We could’ve happily spent much longer there, but there were still a bunch of places we wanted to visit, so off we went to our next stop.
Address: Cave Point County Park, 5360 Schauer Rd, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235
4) Peninsula State Park
On the opposite side of Door County is Peninsula State Park. If you’re a Wisconsin resident, the daily admission vehicle fee is $10; visitors with out of state plates (like us) have to pay $13.
It looks like there’s plenty to do in Peninsula State Park, but we were visiting with one thing in mind – hiking the Eagle Trail.
This is a two mile trail that’s rated as difficult. I’d put it more as moderate-to-difficult, although all the mosquitos and gnats made it much more difficult than it needed to be. We hadn’t put on bug spray, so the hike was less enjoyable than it could’ve been.
Without the bugs, it would’ve been a great hike – about 1/3 of the trail runs alongside the water with an interesting cliff face on the opposite side. I wish I was a rock climber as one section had a large cave in the cliff face about 30 feet off the ground.
On the walk back to the car, we stopped by Eagle Panorama to get a view of the water from higher up.
Address: Peninsula State Park, 9462 Shore Rd, Fish Creek, WI 54212
5) Bier Zot
It was about 6:30pm by the time we got back to the car, so we made our way towards dinner. We were planning on eating at Wild Tomato as Tara at Bark & Brew had said they have great pizza. There was a 30 minute wait, so we went for a drink next door at Bier Zot as they had an outdoor bar adjacent to the restaurant.
They had a few craft beers on tap and I ordered a porter. Shae on the other hand tried three different sparkling wine cocktails – Rosé Lime, Elderflower Lemon and Blood Orange Spritz. She tried them in that order and that was also the order in which she liked them best.
Address: Bier Zot, 10677 N Bay Shore Dr, Sister Bay, WI 54234
6) Wild Tomato
It had been a warm day up in Door County and the sun still hadn’t set, so it was still warm enough to sit outside for dinner at Wild Tomato seeing as we had Truffles with us.
Shae ordered a cheese and tomato pizza topped with cheese curds…
…while I went for a jerk chicken wrap with fries.
We both really enjoyed our meals, plus we had an extremely friendly server called Julia. She’s going on a road trip of her own this summer with her twin sister which sounded like a lot of fun.
Address: Wild Tomato, 10677 N Bay Shore Dr, Sister Bay, WI 54234
6.5) Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik
This isn’t officially part of the list seeing as we didn’t eat or drink there, hence it being 6.5. Tara mentioned Al Johnson’s as they usually have goats grazing on the roof, but there weren’t any around when we visited 🙁 It’s the other side of the road to Wild Tomato, so it’d be worth checking out if the goats are up top.
Address: Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik, 10698 N Bay Shore Dr, Sister Bay, WI 54234
7) Wilson’s Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlor
Shae had realized early on in the day that the one thing we were missing from our list was somewhere to have dessert. While wine tasting at Simon Creek that afternoon, we asked Joan (who was pouring our wine) for an ice cream suggestion.
She gave a couple of suggestions and mentioned that Wilson’s Ice Cream was a Door County institution, so we figured that’d be worth trying out.
Shae likes chocolate ice cream, so she stayed outside with Truffles while I went in to check out their other flavors. There were a few interesting flavors and I ended up getting strawberry ice cream with popping candy inside.
The ice cream was great, but the company policies of Wilson’s aren’t so good. The bowls above are one scoop, but in reality it’s closer to three scoops. I’d asked if I could effectively have half a serving of the strawberry ice cream with popping candy and half of blueberry cheesecake, but they said I’d have to order full serving sizes of each and pay accordingly.
While waiting for my ice cream, someone next to me at the counter asked for a cone for under 12s seeing as it was a smaller portion. However, they refused to serve it to him as he didn’t have a child with him.
I’m all for companies making a profit, but it seems like all Wilson’s ends up doing with these policies is increasing how much ice cream gets thrown away because people can’t eat it all. That’s disappointing as it encourages wastage just so they can earn more money.
The ice cream’s tasty though, so it’s worth a stop if you’re hungry enough for dessert.
Address: Wilson’s Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlor, 9990 Water St S, Ephraim, WI 54211
Question
So those are the 7 places we visited that were recommended to us, but how about you – do you have any recommendations of things to do in Door County? If so, we’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.
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