Door County Anniversary Trip, Day 4

Day 4: Saturday, June 6, 2015

On our fourth day of vacation, we were blessed not only with a beautiful warm day, but also with free admission to all state parks! Apparently the first weekend of June is always an "open house weekend" for Wisconsin state parks, and we took advantage of that today. Our first stop was at Peninsula State Park along the West side of the peninsula.

Horseshoe Island

We did a little hiking for letterboxes, and ended up at the Eagle Bluff lighthouse where we took yet another tour. (They decided not to charge us for stamping our logbooks since we were paying for the tour.) :p The tour was about a half hour long, and took us through the grounds, the house, and a quick peak from the tower. 

Green Bay

Looking down from the top of the lighthouse

The springs over the solar panel are there to keep birds away!

Another Fresnell Light

After that, we wandered around some more by the lake side before taking off for our next state park.

Our next stop was Potawatomi State Park South of Sturgeon Bay. We stopped briefly at a visitor's center, and were so glad we did because we were able to meet Clyde, the 20+ year old basset hound! 

We didn't end up going inside the center...we just sat down and pet Clyde for a while. Apparently the secret to letting your basset grow old is "lots of spoiling"...but he was in great shape, so that spoiling either doesn't come in the form of food, or he gets enough exercise! We sat down to pet him the way we would Charlotte, and he did the exact same move she always does - flopped over on his side so we could rub his belly. :) Oh how we love bassets!

We were able to learn a little about the Niagara Escarpment here. We hadn't heard of it before, but now we were able to see and experience it first hand!

Another tower...

And the view!

At least this tower was taller than the tree line!

We were also able to take a short walk on the beginning of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. I guess we're going to be seeing a lot less of the Arizona Trail, so it's time to find some others to learn about and dream of backpacking on them!

After a quick lunch at Culvers, we stopped at Cave Point County Park and took another walk along the cliffs, this time facing the Lake Michigan side of the peninsula. There were more lake views here than most trails we had seen so far, and we enjoyed every single one of them. :)

We found the first letterbox planted in WI!

After that, we headed to our last state park for the day - Whitefish Dunes State Park. Now when we think of dunes, we think of places like White Sands National Monument, or Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. At these places, you're free to stop and walk around on the sand wherever you'd like. Not so here! There dunes were protected, usually with a fence around them, and had signs forbidding people to walk on them. It was fine, we were here to walk the trails and find letterboxes, but there's just something so fun about getting to run around freely in sand dunes!

It's a beach with actual sand, not rocks!!

NO running on the sand!

Climbing Wisconsin's "Mt. Baldy." Maybe a tad less impressive that Arizona's.

I love him.

Wigwam!

The park was quiet and nearly empty, and we really enjoyed hiking around the trails. We wrapped up our day at 6 after a good 8 hours of hiking and boxing in different parks!

As we were driving through Sister Bay, we noticed that the goats were on the roof of the restaurant for the first time since we arrived, so we just had to stop to see them!

Hello there!

For sunset, we went back to Ellison Bluff and enjoyed another breathtaking scene of the sun setting over the lake. We found that just as the sunset changes from night to night, so does the lake - tonight, parts of it looked like a solid ice rink!

Day 4 Wrap Up: Visited 3 state parks and 2 county parks, hiked 8 miles, found 6 letterboxes.