How to plan a summer vacation to Door County, Wisconsin

06.06.2024 - 01:09 / lonelyplanet.com

As a kid, some of the most thrilling words out of my mom’s mouth were, “Go find your aqua socks.”

Like Indiana Jones with his weathered fedora, slipping into my water socks meant adventure was afoot. It also meant we were headed to the only place where I needed such serious pieces of outdoor gear: Door County, Wisconsin.

Even decades before anyone uttered the phrase “screen time,” I recognized that I wasn’t really an outdoorsy kid — not quite a city slicker, but maybe more of a mall rat. Family vacations typically focused on water parks and arcades, but heading to Door County from the Chicago suburb where I grew up was an opportunity to unleash another side of myself — one that chilled with baby goats rather than loitering at stores, and skipped stones rather than skee-balls. 

The trips to Door County came about because of my best friend, Jenna, who came from a certifiably outdoorsy family. Her parents, both teachers, owned a modest lakeside cottage outside of Sturgeon Bay. There, they spent summers hiking, biking, kayaking, and generously offering to let a certain mall rat tag along on trips. 

Up north, we spent days cycling the rolling roads of Potawatomi State Park with Jenna’s mom, then floating aimlessly on inner tubes in Lake Michigan. At night, we’d climb the creaky stairs to the tip-top of the A-frame cottage to play Solar Quest (a galactic version of Monopoly) before falling into bed and quizzing each other on how many moons of Jupiter we could name without looking at the game board. Door County was where I first saw the northern lights. After roasting marshmallows at a beachside bonfire, Jenna’s dad, who taught junior high science, pointed to glowing green streaks in the sky and whispered, “aurora borealis.”       

Now, with a little mall rat of my own, I’ve been thinking about those summer trips and how much they meant to me. I’d like to introduce my son to the baby goats, hit the Potawatomi trails and just maybe give him a glimpse of the northern lights. 

If you’d like to do something similar — reconnecting with nature or simply experiencing what I’d call a classically epic Midwestern summer vacation — here are my tips for making it happen. 

Looking for other less-visited North American destinations? Here are our suggestions

Door County is a peninsula that’s about 70 miles long and 18 miles across at its widest point, meaning your base doesn’t have to define your entire trip. If, for example, you choose the eastern side, which sits on Lake Michigan, you can still drive to the opposite, Green Bay coastline for an afternoon of shopping or wine tasting.

Vibes: Sturgeon Bay is laid-back (thanks to fewer crowds than in some of the more tourist-packed towns farther north) and an easy-breezy base