Hanging with my gnomies.
We spent the day on Washington Island. It’s a small, 35 square mile island, at the very tip of Door County Peninsula. There are 710 residents that live here year round. How they do it, I don’t know. There’s no stoplights, one grocery store and can only be accessed by ferry. They can also have very long winters.
I asked one of the residents if they were able to get any Amazon deliveries. Yep, the truck delivers packages to the ferry. Once it arrives the resident gets a personal phone call and has to pick it up at the ferry terminal.
The great thing about being on an island is that you really can’t get lost. I think we explored every mile of roadway available. My favorite place we visited was Stavekirke. It’s a place of spiritual meditation and worship. The building is both a replica (patterned after Borgund, Norway church in 1150 A.D.) and a tribute to Washington Island’s large Scandinavian heritage. The carvings and adornments blend both the pagan and Christian symbols.
We spent a lot of time at the farm museum. There were lots of barns, homesteads, farming machinery, blacksmith shop and livestock. One of the barns had a 12 minute video of Hans talking about his grandmother from Iceland arriving in the late 1800’s. I’m sure it was interesting, but we couldn’t understand a thing he said. Ned, however, stuck it thru.
Great place to have a picnic too! The weather was amazing. Hard to believe it’s pouring in Chicago with flash flood warnings. It was a close game...we both sucked.
We climbed to the top of Lookout Tower in Mountain Park. There were 169 stairs. It was an amazing view you could see as far as Michigan.
P.S. I don’t really like my brother this much, I was just exhausted from climbing all those stairs.
Of course, there’s always time to goof off too! What’s this? A telephone booth with a princess phone?? Gary encouraging Ned to upgrade to a cell.
Washington Island is a beautiful place.
Tonight Gary and Dru introduced us to a fish boil. It’s a great local experience. So what is a fish boil? It’s a Scandinavian tradition that’s been occurring on this Peninsula since the 1860’s. A big pot with locally caught whitefish is boiled on an open fire in a outdoor community style kitchen, usually in a large metal kettle. Tonight, Gil was our boiler master. Salt is added to the boiling water, next come the potatoes. Once the potatoes are cooked then the whitefish is added. Once the fish is just about ready the boil master says, “The boilover is about to start”. He throws kerosene onto the fire and it causes the oils in the pot to rise and overflow. Our dinner was so delicious. For dessert we were served cherry pie. Did you know Door County is the 4th largest producer of cherries in North America? Here’s a video of the boilover. Fish Boil.
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