Washington Island, Door County, Wisconsin

Monday, August 17

This morning the wind is blowing pretty hard and the boat is rocking here at the dock. Since yesterday the wind has clocked around exactly 180°. There’s a flag behind us on this dock. Yesterday the wind came from the south and the flag blew to the left; now it’s from the north and the flag is pointing to the right. When we crossed Lake Michigan on Saturday, there was no wind at all. We crossed from Leland to Washington Island on a glassy sea in a thick fog for about seven hours. We could see only about 1/4 mile in any direction, but with radar and the depth finder, we were fine. Also with experience on Long Island Sound, Brian knew how to navigate through the fog. We expected the fog to lift at any time, but it didn’t happen until we were about a half hour from Washington Island. 

We really like this place. It feels “authentic” and relaxed and kind of like we’ve moved back in time to the 1950s. We are at the top of Wisconsin where Green Bay and Lake Michigan meet. Three or four ferries arrive a dozen times a day (right next to us) with people and their bikes. They ride around and get burgers and milkshakes and visit the attractions: a Viking style church, a fiber arts school, a farm museum with a collection of buildings, tools and machinery that’s open all the time, a small beach with smooth white stones from a rock formation that reaches all the way to Niagara Falls, and lavender fields with stores that sell their fragrant products. We rode our tandem all over the island, meeting nice people and hearing stories about how they came to live here. Some stay only from May to October, while others live here year-round, trying to convince us that the island’s six months of Winter are milder than Chicago’s!

We changed time zones as we crossed Lake Michigan, so the sun comes up an hour earlier than it did a few miles back and it sets an hour earlier, too, which I like. Also the days grow shorter as we travel south from Canada and as Summer ends, so the time of sunrise and sunset changes significantly every day. 

But still there’s no internet! I thought that once we were back in American towns, that would no longer be a problem, but it is. I’ve continued to write the blogs, but things have conspired against getting them posted. 

The boat has stopped rocking and the wind seems to be easing up. I hope so. We want to travel to Sister Bay today, but we can’t go unless the wind calms down. Now it is from the east.