That said, it is now time to tell you about my hands-down favorite place in Wisconsin -- Door County.
If I had been to Door earlier in my sojourn here, I might have held off on wanting to leave so badly for another six months to a year. For a vacation destination, it's surprisingly uncommercial. Most of the hotels/inns/b&bs/
restaurants/shops/things to do were locally owned independent businesses, which is so awesome.
There was so much to do. There are used bookshops, which I love and cannot resist. There's shopping which is not your usual tourist-trap shopping (you know, 15 stores which all stock the same shot glasses and t-shirts and hats -- there was some of that merch, but it wasn't all there was.) There was totally awesome food (which, notably, had a lot of healthy and vegetarian options, which really isn't easy to do where we live -- if you don't want Indian food or pasta, you're eating at home.)
While not healthy, it is vegetarian. And adorable.
They made use of local ingredients -- lots of cherries and apples and delicious whole grains. Sidenote: I am in love with a new food our innkeeper called "fruit soup." Right now typing about it it's all I want for breakfast. He served it with homemade granola and I am not kidding when I say that if it's not served in heaven I may not go.
Everything was about the area without what you normally see -- emblazoning the name on stuff you can find everywhere. So much of what we looked at and ate had a lot of personality, was a little (or a lot) quirky, and was homemade.
Like my homemade Door County candy bar that I wolfed down like a starving orphan while watching Chelsea Lately in our room while my husband slept off the 6-mile bike ride.
Oh, yeah -- there's an awesome state park on the lake, which we rode through. And the next day, drove through, because it's pretty big and much of it's uphill and we wanted to see more water and less trees.
At a scenic overlook, my husband and I watched a couple get engaged. I may have forgotten to tell you in this stream-of-conscious early morning rambling that we were celebrating our anniversary this weekend. So it was both beautiful and humbling to see love continue to grow in the world -- and to be reminded of that first excitement of engagement.
