Tour of eastern Wisconsin Day 8
This was our last day in Door County. We said goodbye to our hosts and headed south towards Milwaukee; but not before we stopped for some tourist stuff. We made stops at Door Artisan Cheese Shop in Egg Harbor(really old aged cheddar), apple stuff at Wood Orchard Market, also in Egg Harbor, and Seiquest Orchard Farm Market in Sister Bay for some cherry themed snacks. I love salsa but it turns out Cherry salsa, not so much.
Our planned stop was Sturgeon Bay to visit the Door County Maritime Museum. The museum is part of the DCMM organization with three locations including Cana Island Lighthouse and Deaths Door Maritime Museum in Gills Rock. We did not get a chance to visit Gills Rock. We’ll add that to our bucket list for next time.
Tickets for the museum were $20.00 which included a guided tour of the John Purves tug. We scheduled the tug tour then started on the first floor. I guess I didn’t realize that I enjoyed boat museums as much as car and airplane museums. There were four main rooms on the the first floor, each having a theme or subject.
I didn’t take many pictures of boats, it’s tough to get a good images with a phone camera and the displays aren’t always photogenic.
Some of the second floor rooms opened to the first floor displays for a better look. the rest of the floors were displays and information kiosks on various subjects, such as boat building, weather, transportation and environment in the Door County area. These floors didn’t interest me much but Mary found them very informative. The final floor of the Jim Kress Lighthouse Tower was the outside observation area.
We had a great view of the bay and a map showed us where a shipwreck had occurred and where the sunk ship is located. When we kayaked on Sturgeon Bay previously we passed right above the wreckage. Apparently, the wreckage is sometimes visible from the surface but on that day, the wind made that impossible.
Our tour time was coming up so we took the elevator to the first floor and gathered for the tug tour.
The tug was was built in 1919 and worked on the Great Lakes until WWII when it was ‘enlisted’ as a supply ship around Alaska as well as a weather observation platform. After the war, it returned to the Great Lakes and was eventually renamed the John Purves. It was donated to the museum in 2003 where it was restored.
The tour was really good. The ship doesn’t operate but it sure looks like it could. I’d recommend the tour even if you’re not that interested in boats. There’s a lot of history there.
We spent about three hour at the museum. It always seems like you never get to see everything with one visit, we’ll return another time. We thought it was definitely worth it.
We were a little hungry so we found a local bakery/restaraunt called Scaturo’s Baking Company and Cafe. We had roast beef sandwiches on fresh sourdough. They had a whole freezer of prepared casseroles so we picked up a chicken pot pie. We also bought a couple of huge cookies. We’ll remember this place on our next trip.
Our next stop was Milwaukee so we thought we’d get a cup of coffee to go along with the cookies. 5th and Jefferson was on our way out of town so we stopped at the shop again.
Milwaukee is just a little over a 2 1/2 hour drive so we arrived right about supper time. The Chicken pot pie casserole was very tasty and was enough for two meals.
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