It was a day much like this one. Dark, wet, dour. I can’t recall what motivated me to drive through the countryside towards my northward destination some 15 years ago this fall, but drive I did. Through Milwaukee and past Kohler, around the southern boundary of Green Bay and north, bearing east, following the route that would dump me at the edge of a washed out gravel driveway. I was determined to go to Door County for what was my first visit, and I drove that untrustworthy gray coupe there one sloppy November afternoon, fueled by cheap gas and the Pinkerton CD. I had a girlfriend I was running from, a dream of large salmon I was running to, and a few days to figure out how to get from the first point to the latter.
I mentioned that I had never, as of that time, been to Door County. I didn’t know anything about it, but I assumed it would be not unlike Lake Geneva. When I rolled into town- which town it was escapes my memory- it didn’t look anything like Lake Geneva. I mean, it had buildings and shops and restaurants with people’s names on them, but it was dark. Most of the light bulbs had burned out, I figured, or they had been turned out earlier in the night. I was pleased to find a small cottage with a light on at the edge of the road where pavement turned gravel, the intoxicating burnt glow of a Vacancy sign lighting my way. I don’t remember what I paid for that cabin that night, and I can’t remember if I stayed just the one night or two, but I paid the rate and made my way towards the cabin. It was a slight cabin, surrounded by woods and other cabins, but both the woods and the neighboring cabins were painted the same solid color. If Crayola made a color labeled “dark”, this entire page was scribbled solid with it.
I settled into my cabin, which is to say I placed a backpack on the bed. I flipped through the channels on the dresser top television. It was darker still outside, spitting rain, and the wind had kicked up. It would have been silent except for the trees bristling against that wind and the rain driving against the roof. I was uncomfortable in that space. I was also afraid. It was, by my count, one of the first nights I had spent away from home as a grown up. I wasn’t with friends or otherwise accompanied, I was alone, solitary. I was an adult, and so I gathered myself, calmed my racing heart, and ran through the wind and the dark and the stinging rain to the relative comfort of my car. I can only imagine what the old couple in the cottage thought of their cowardly tenant. Did they think I was on the lam? A fresh fugitive, holed up in their dark cabin for a night or a month, crafting a further escape, plotting my next crime, or just peaking out the bedroom curtain warily waiting for the federal agents? Did they call and give the authorities the tags on my cars and were they disappointed to discover that I was simply a law abiding fool who thought salmon were easy to catch? Likely.
I drove back out of the darkness of the cabin woods and into town. It must have been about 10 pm. I knew there had to be a harbor nearby or some sort of pier or beach or something adjacent the water that I might fish off of, and so I parked near some other cars near what I assumed to be a secret fishing hole, something magical that was only frequented by those adults, like me, who eschewed comfort on nights like tonight and instead stood in the pouring rain, fishing and then catching and wise. Instead of this ideal, I found only a few unfriendly fishermen of questionable character. I was a shiny, naive, freshly minted adult, and I was in a place reserved for men twice or three times my age. I left before I had a chance to be murdered and thrown into the bay.
This was not a place and specifically not a time for novice fishermen, and I accepted that by 11 pm. I had driven around a bit, in the dark, and never found a suitable, well lit, fishing spot. So I did what any new adult might do and stopped at a gas station to buy a frozen pizza. I rushed home to my cabin, carefully parking the car as close to the cabin door as possible so that I might move from car to cabin in one swift maneuver. Later that night, I made and ate the entire pizza and slept with one eye open until morning mercifully came.
I ventured out that morning, into and around Door County, sniffing for fishing spots and absorbing scenery that was foreign to me. There were shops and restaurants, the ones that I had seen the night before, but they were as dark at noon as they had been at midnight. I found gas stations open, and a grocery store that reminded me of Bell’s, but mostly I found signs taped to doors and spelled out in mismatched letters on roadside marquees that told me they’d see me next spring. It was early November, with plenty of life left in fall, and Door County had effectively, unofficially, collectively closed its namesake.
This might be just another time of year for those of us in Lake Geneva, but it’s a closing time of a different sort for many who vacation in other, lesser, Midwestern vacation destinations. When I visited that miserable stretch known as Harbor Country earlier this year, it was the end of June and I was told that the area was sparsely populated because the season had not yet officially begun. This was odd to me, but I accepted it. Also odd was the announcement that most of these business would be closed by the end of October. This was Michigan, but my fall those years ago was in Door County. Similar destinations competing for your vacation home dollar, yet between Door County and Harbor Country and Lake Geneva, only one will be aglow with activity this coming weekend and the next. If you think that destination is Door County, then I really haven’t explained myself very well.
A seasonal retreat is fine. It’s fun. A trip somewhere for a weekend in summer and a trip somewhere different for a weekend or a week in the winter, this is nice. But to seek out a destination that has activity and population and events and accessible roads every day, all year, from now until eternity, now that makes more sense to me. A trip to Door County this weekend will be fun for you, if seven hour drives followed by maddening isolation is fun for you. That isn’t to say that there isn’t isolation in a Lake Geneva November, as there is, but there isn’t just isolation and frozen gas station pizzas on the menu. That 98.375% of Lake Geneva area restaurants and shops are open all year around is a benefit to this market that many will overlook. On the positive side, it’s not difficult to get reservations at your favorite Harbor Country restaurant this weekend. Just leave a message at the tone and they’ll call you back next June.
Lake Geneva, scratching that all season vacation home itch since John Brink first ordered butter poached Lake Trout at the Potowatomi Grill in 1834 and declared it to be delicious.