A fine kettle of fish on Lake Michigan

In retrospect, I should have chosen the 5 p.m. seating. But the 6:30 seating offered the opportunity to catch both of Door County’s premier light shows: the sun setting over Green Bay and the pyrotechnic climax of the region’s celebrated fish boil. At least that had been my thinking until I discovered that the kettle of honor was warming up behind Ephraim’s Old Post Office Restaurant and that the much-anticipated boil-over appeared to be timed to coincide exactly with the solar grand finale out front.

Reluctantly I stayed put. Sunsets I’ve seen before, I reasoned, but a fish boil, never. I’d been told that every tourist who visits this part of the country should experience one, and 10 local restaurants offer the flaming feast.

Our cook and fire chief, Earl, warmed up with a few corny fish jokes before confessing that no one really knows whether Door County’s signature entree owes its origins to lumberjacks or Scandinavian fishermen. In either case, the recipe was simple.

First, generous portions of red potatoes and white onions were loaded into a cast-iron kettle of heavily salted (five pounds worth) water. Earl’s thrice-nightly routine began with step two, lowering a tray of fresh local whitefish fillets into the now boiling water. With a little time to kill, Earl began extolling the virtues of Door County, beginning with the hackneyed analogy that “Door County is the Cape Cod of the Midwest.”

Having just spent the entire day wandering its bicoastal lengths, I couldn’t agree. Cape Cod is a whole arm of shifting sand that extends into the cold Atlantic. Door County, a limestone plateau, is a fractured pinkie that splays out into the even colder Lake Michigan, off the cooking mitt that is Wisconsin.

“But it’s not the Dells,” he continued with a broadside at the state’s leading resort area. “So you don’t have to spend a whole lot of money if you don’t want to.” To prove his point, he recited a list of Door County’s free -- or at least cheap -- attractions. As I had just spent a grand total of $3 seeing most of these sites, I nodded in agreement.

Soon it was time for the secret ingredient, a quart of kerosene, which Earl added with much dramatic fanfare. Not into the kettle, but underneath it. The result was a towering 10-second flare-up that caused the frothing concoction to boil over, washing out most of the salt water, and leaving the fish, potatoes and onions moist and lightly seasoned.

The show over, we regrouped on the front porch, where I was pleased to see that the sun hadn’t yet disappeared beyond the shimmering gold lame surface of Eagle Harbor.

Ideal time of year

I had chosen an excellent time to experience Door County: midweek in mid-September -- two weeks too soon for the fall colors, perhaps, but two weeks after the summer crowds. Despite the Chamber of Commerce’s attempts to promote the region as a year-round destination, the vast majority of visitors descend during the summer months, when the days are warm. The pick-your-own season for cherries lasts from late July through mid-August. To see acres and acres of these delicate pink-and-white blossoms, aim for late May.

I had driven 250 miles from Chicago, making it as far as Sturgeon Bay the first night, halfway up the 90-mile-long peninsula that is Door County. Named for the fish once plentiful in its waters, Sturgeon Bay found new economic life when the five-mile ship canal connecting Green Bay and Lake Michigan was completed in the 1880s. With 9,100 year-round residents, the Victorian town is now Door County’s metropolis. It’s also where the peninsula narrows to about 10 miles in width and the economic baton passes from agriculture to tourism.

My first stop that morning had been the Door County Museum (suggested donation $2), the Chicago Tribune’s candidate for “best small museum in the Midwest.” The structure is loaded with artifacts and displays that trace the county’s natural and human history from the indigenous Potawatomi and Chippewa Indians through what is commonly referred to as “the pioneer days.”

Among the more interesting things to learn about the region is that, in sequence, it belonged to the Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin territories, and when French explorer Jean Nicolet first landed here in 1634, he was convinced he had made it to Asia by way of the Northwest Passage. After days of powwowing with some Winnebago Indians, he realized he’d gotten only as far as someplace named “Ouisconsin.”

Not surprisingly, much is also made of Door County’s trademark cherries, some 10 million pounds of which (mostly Montmorency) are processed each year from about 3,000 acres. There are also 2,000 acres of apples.

Before heading north, I stopped in at the Sturgeon Bay Community Development Corp., where the appropriately named Brenda Fish gave me a map of the county’s 10 lighthouses. Only two are regularly open to visitors.

Working my way up the peninsula’s east coast, I pulled into Whitefish Dunes State Park, where I found that Wisconsin state parks charge based on the state of vehicle registration, with “foreigners” paying $10 -- twice as much as natives. As I was interested only in a quick look at Wisconsin’s highest sand dunes, I beat a hasty retreat.

But just up the road is Cave Point, a picturesque spot where the waters of Lake Michigan have nibbled away the bases of the limestone bluffs, sculpting overhanging observation platforms. Cave Point, a county park, is free to all.

Near the hamlet of Jacksonport, I pulled into Meridian Park, a wayside clearing that marks 45 degrees north latitude, that is, halfway to the North Pole. A bit farther is the 1869 Cana Island Lighthouse. It is Door County’s most photographed site, a whitewashed beacon that towers over the nearby shoals. I paid $3 to walk the grounds and visit the small museum. It was worth it.

Cutting across the peninsula on County Road Q, I arrived in quintessentially quaint Ephraim (pronounced “EE-frum”), a waterside village of white clapboard, green-shuttered buildings, with a pair of tapering steeples peeking above a canopy of maples and elms. Ephraim owes its simplicity to 50 Norwegian Moravians, whose spiritual leader, the Rev. Andreas Iverson, led the way by walking here over the ice from Green Bay in February 1853. Their church -- the oldest in Door County -- was completed a few years later. A pioneer barn and schoolhouse and half a dozen inns complete the idyllic setting.

By now it was past lunchtime, so I headed up to Sister Bay, named for the two small islands known as “The Sisters” that lie to the northwest. Founded by Norwegian lumbermen, Sister Bay is now the arts-and-crafts center of Door County, but it’s a little too cutesy -- in a grandmotherly sort of way -- for my taste.

It was hard to miss the village’s other attraction, Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant, as traffic slowed to a crawl while tourists gawked and got out to photograph goats feeding on the pitched roof. The roof is made of sod in the rural Scandinavian manner. Inside the bright, wooden interior, waitresses in traditional Swedish folk costumes clomped about in clogs. Having spent a year in Stockholm in the mid-’80s, I tried ordering my grilled farmers’ cheese sandwich in what I thought was reasonably proficient Swedish. The blank stare I received suggested otherwise, so I quickly reverted to English. I found out later they were speaking Czech, not Swedish.

Continuing northward, I reached Ellison Bay, originally settled by Danes and home of the Viking Restaurant, site of the first commercial fish boil in 1962. I stopped at Ellison Bay Bluff County Park, where there is a panoramic view over a sparkling turquoise Green Bay from atop a 100-foot escarpment. I scrambled down through a cedar thicket to the stone beach glistening in the late afternoon sun. To my right, I spied a pair of lovebirds who had snuggled in under a makeshift driftwood tepee. Not wanting to ruin the moment for any of us, I exited stage left.

Next on the itinerary was Fish Creek, which is awash in charm and reminiscent of New England. Founded in 1853 by wood supplier Asa Thorp with California Gold Rush money, Fish Creek was at the Victorian vanguard of Door County’s conversion to tourism. Cozy inns and tony shops still dominate, along with a reverence for seniority: You can’t go more than two blocks without seeing some sign indicating “the oldest this” and “the oldest that.” Lest you be suspicious, I can assure you that Midwesterners don’t lie; they’re just very precise with their qualifiers, such as “on its original site,” “unreconstructed” and “fulfilling its original purpose.”

Breakfast the next morning was at the White Gull Inn (founded in 1896 as Dr. Herman Welcker’s Resort), the oldest hotel and restaurant still operating on the peninsula.

By 8 a.m., most of the cherry-wood tables in the restaurant’s cherry-themed back room were already full of patrons whittling down stacks of cherry pancakes and the White Gull’s famous homemade coffeecake, which happened to be apricot the day I visited. I ordered both. Not surprisingly, I didn’t make it to the coffeecake. Fortunately, the staff was well prepared for such contingencies: In minutes the cake was boxed and ready to enjoy during the ferry ride to Washington Island, Door County’s detached northern fingernail.

Getting away from it all

Even if Door County is Cape Cod, Washington Island definitely isn’t Nantucket. With only 650 year-round residents spread out over 22 square miles of mostly second-growth forest, this is where Door County’s own residents go to get away from it all. The six-mile crossing of Porte des Morts (Death’s Door) Passage, a dangerous shoal-ridden strait that’s littered with shipwrecks -- and from which the county gets its name -- was disappointingly placid.

My $17 round-trip fare included the Cherry Train, a one-man road show led by “Red” Ed Livingston, a former tuba player at Radio City. As we set out on a 90-minute tour in open-air trams, Livingston told us the island, settled by Icelandic loggers and potato farmers in the 1870s, was named for a schooner called the George Washington.

Livingston was particularly proud that Washington Island is “what Door County used to be like in the 1950s. There are only three restaurants, four gift stores -- and only one service station. We also have the smallest school district in the state: 119 students.” He then went on to tell about the year there was only one graduating senior -- and how they still held a senior prom for him.

Our 90-minute tour included the Ostrich Farm, run by one of Livingston’s buddies, a retired Ringling Bros. Circus clown; the Farm Museum, depicting pioneer agriculture; and Schoolhouse Beach, said to be one of only five beaches in the world (another is the French Riviera) composed of limestone pebbles. Unfortunately, the Stavkirke (stave church), a three-story wooden structure built in traditional Norwegian style by island craftsmen in the 1980s, was closed in preparation for a wedding.

Had I had more time and a way to get there, I would have visited adjacent Rock Island State Park to see the Viking Hall and Pottawatomie Lighthouse, the oldest government lighthouse on Lake Michigan. But I was due back in Chicago that night, and I couldn’t afford to wait three hours for the next ferry.

Back on the mainland, there was one last stop to be made -- at Lautenbach’s Orchard Country Marketplace and Winery -- where do-it-yourselfers can pick cherries and then shoot for the Wisconsin state record (48 feet for men, 38 feet for women) at the cherry pit spitting pit. That season is long over, but out in the winery (barn), I joined a busload of tourists for a quick tasting of some of the orchard’s 27 varieties of fruit wines. The grapes may come from California, but the names were strictly Door County: Cherry Chardonnay, Cherry Rose, Cherry Blossom and Cherry Christmas to You!

After all I did in my three-day visit, it would have been churlish of me to close my Door County getaway without a bottle of two of its surprisingly decent wines. Besides, I understand they go particularly well with fish boils.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Cherries jubilee in Door County

GETTING THERE:

From LAX to Chicago O’Hare, nonstop flights are available on American, United and Spirit; connecting flights (change of planes) are on Delta, America West, Northwest, Continental and US Airways. Restricted fares begin at $288 for American and United and $158 for the other airlines.

From LAX to Green Bay, Wis., connecting service (change of planes) is available on Midwest Express, Northwest, United and American. Restricted fares begin at $261.

WHERE TO STAY

Hillside Inn, 9980 Water St., Ephraim, WI 54211; (866) 673-8456, fax (920) 854-7667, www.visitephraim.com. Former Santa Monica residents Claire and Jim Webb own this renovated turn-of-the-century New England-style inn, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Watch sunset over Eagle Harbor from the veranda. Doubles from $190, including breakfast and afternoon refreshments.

The White Gull Inn, 4225 Main St., Fish Creek, WI 54212; (888) 364-9542, fax (920) 868-2367, www.whitegullinn.com and The Whistling Swan, 4192 Main St., Fish Creek, WI 54212; (920) 868-3442, www.whistlingswan.com. Both of these are cozy, refurbished inns, but the White Gull (doubles $132, including breakfast of cherry pancakes) offers more modern conveniences than the Whistling Swan (double suite $162 with continental breakfast).

The Scofield House Bed & Breakfast, 908 Michigan St., Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235; (888) 463-0204, fax (920) 743-7727, www.scofieldhouse.com. Restored 1902 Victorian features whirlpools and fireplaces in five of its six suites. Doubles start at $112, including breakfast. No children younger than 14.

WHERE TO EAT:

Old Post Office Restaurant, 10040 Water St. (Highway 42), Ephraim; (920) 854-4034. Home-style decor and cooking in an 1874 restored and converted general store overlooking Eagle Harbor. Reservations required for the thrice-nightly $16.25 fish boil.

Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant, 704 Bay Shore Drive, Sister Bay; (920) 854-2626. Scandinavian decor with Swedish specialties. Goats graze atop the sod roof. Dinner entrees $12.95-$19.95.

Inn at Cedar Crossing, 336 Louisiana St., Sturgeon Bay; (920) 743-4249. Upscale fireside dining in downtown Sturgeon Bay, featuring contemporary dishes and fish. Dinner entrees $20-$26.

Perry’s Cherry Diner, 230 Michigan St., Sturgeon Bay; (920) 743-9910. Family-style ‘50s-era diner has old favorites such as meatloaf and burgers, and contemporary dishes. No item over $10.

TO LEARN MORE:

Door County Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 406, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235; (920) 743-4456, fax (920) 743-7873, www.doorcountyvacations.com.

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Residents say every tourist who visits Door County, Wis., should experience the region’s specialty dish -- a flaming feast of whitefish and vegetables called a fish boil.

Local whitefish is added to a kettle of boiling salt water. Kerosene stokes the fire, producing pyrotechnics.

The flames are doused and the frothing kettle boils over, washing out most of the salt water.

The fish is removed and served with potatoes and other side dishes. What does it taste like? Boiled fish.