Your Door County CME conference.

Door County after your study day

Study days finish at 2:00 PM Central time. For an easy afternoon, choose one outing near where you stay: a walk along the Sister Bay waterfront, a stroll through the village of Ephraim, or the shoreline and trails of Peninsula State Park. Leave time for the drive between villages, and check whether a lighthouse or museum you want is open that day, since some are seasonal.

Travel, lodging and any park or museum admission are arranged separately. Your conference is built around your specialty and interests; the peninsula is simply the setting you choose for it.

Peninsula State Park and Fish Creek

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources lists Peninsula State Park with more than 460 campsites, three group camps, a summer theater, an 18-hole golf course, a sand beach, bike trails and eight miles of Door County shoreline. The park lists Eagle Bluff Lighthouse among its features. A vehicle admission sticker is required to enter.

The Door County tourism pages describe Fish Creek as a village of tree-lined streets with shops, art galleries and restaurants, and they point visitors from there to the park’s trails and roads through forests, along the shore and over limestone bluffs. The page says inns, cottages and hotels in Fish Creek are within walking distance of the shops, shoreline and parks.

Lighthouses and maritime history

Cana Island Lighthouse is at Baileys Harbor and is run by the Door County Maritime Museum. Reaching it means crossing a rocky causeway on foot, and when lake levels are high water sometimes flows over the causeway. A tractor and haywagon ride is offered for visitors who prefer not to walk. The tower has 97 spiral steps to an outdoor gallery. The island is open from May through October, so check the season before you plan around it.

In Sturgeon Bay, the museum’s Jim Kress Maritime Lighthouse Tower has exhibits on 10 floors, and the city’s visitor office says it stays open in winter. The U.S. Coast Guard station there is a place to see the North Pierhead lighthouse, known as Big Red.

Bay villages: Sister Bay and Ephraim

Sister Bay is a village with Scandinavian roots. Its Waterfront Park runs from the Mill Road area around the yacht club north toward Scandia Road. Resorts, cottages and hotels are spread in and around the village, and its shops sell Scandinavian imports and outdoor gear.

Ephraim has white clapboard buildings and picket fences, a long sandy beach, and bed-and-breakfasts set in vintage homes, log cabins and old barns. The village says it has more harbor-view dining than anywhere else in the county, and the Ephraim Historical Foundation runs museums in the Anderson Store and the Anderson Barn History Center.

Sturgeon Bay on foot

Sturgeon Bay has shops on both sides of its ship canal and two bridges across it. Its visitor office lists waterfront Bridge Walks of 1.2 and 3 miles, the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Nature Preserve, Potawatomi State Park, the Ahnapee State Trail and a local stretch of the Ice Age Trail. The Door County Maritime Museum has a Sturgeon Bay location, and the museum also runs the Death’s Door Maritime Museum in Gills Rock, so compare each site’s days with your 2:00 PM finish. In winter the visitor office adds that ships arrive at the Sturgeon Bay shipyard for repairs and storage.

Dunes, caves and wilder shoreline

Whitefish Dunes State Park is a day-use park where you can walk along Lake Michigan or follow trails through large sand dunes and forest, and it has a nature center and a reservable picnic shelter overlooking Lake Michigan near the beach and hiking trails. Sturgeon Bay’s visitor office suggests kayaking the caves at Cave Point County Park and notes the ice formations there in winter.

Newport State Park sits at the far end of the Door Peninsula, with more than 2,300 acres of forest, 11 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and about 30 miles of hiking paths. The park is open daily all year, is a designated Dark Sky Park and allows backpack camping. A vehicle sticker is required.

When to visit Door County

Sturgeon Bay’s seasonal pages say cherry trees begin to bloom as early as late April, and they also mention apple trees, daffodils, tulips and lilacs in spring. Summer brings a Saturday farmers market with cherries and sweet corn, orchards and dune walks. In fall you can pick apples, hike the state parks and paddle to see the colors from the water.

Winter is quieter but not closed. The maritime museum and its lighthouse tower stay open, Cave Point shows its ice, and Potawatomi and Whitefish Dunes state parks offer winter hiking. Shift’s milder travel months here are May–June and September–October.

Getting to Door County and your study setting

Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport lists ground transportation options on its website. Door County’s tourism pages call Sturgeon Bay the gateway to the peninsula, with Northern Door beyond it, and Sister Bay is the village Shift uses as the area’s center. Check where your lodging sits along the peninsula before you book.

The map shows straight-line distances from Shift’s designated center. These are orientation distances, not driving distances or travel-time estimates. Check your exact address against the conference’s check-in area before booking.