Coyote Roadhouse: Good Energy
By Karen Nordahl

Approaching the Coyote Roadhouse in the high summer season, you are likely to see cars filling the lot, parked amongst the trees and lined up along the roadside. Walk in the door and the place is hopping.

Bar stools are occupied, booths are filled with families, friends are mingling at tables on the porch overlooking Kangaroo Lake, and several children are testing the rope swing in the big tree on the lawn. . (more)

Idlewild Golf Course
By Julia Chomeau

Tucked away on the very south side of Sturgeon Bay lies Idlewild Golf Course. The setting is beautiful with forests, ponds and wooden bridges. Driving the cart path seems, at times, more like a tour of a state park than a golf course.

At one point on my go-round, a beautiful blue heron (which I mistakenly identified as a pterodactyl—it was huge!) glided gracefully across the fairway. There is a large pond that is so lovely I find it hard to call it a “hazard.” With hole names like Cedar Nest and Wild Feathers, it is obvious that nature comes as, well, second nature out here. (more)

Night Skies Over Washington Island
By Carol Stayton

Visitors to Washington Island often remark how different the sky is here. Imagine if you will, a sea of stars or a light show of Northern Lights for your night’s entertainment.

No "curtain call" to make, no black tie – just you and the night sky. Why is the night sky over Washington Island so different than any other place? (more)

The Story of a Studio Potter
Brian Fitzgerald working in clay ‘til the end
By Allison Vroman

“What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”

This is a rather daunting question for most anyone, usually answered with a wrinkling of the eyebrows and a contemplative “Hmmm,” or with a shrug of the shoulders and simple “I don’t know.”

For those people who actually have an answer to the inquiry, it seems that oftentimes they verbalize it in a reserved way, as if saying the words out loud might somehow taint the possibility of them ever coming true. However, this was not the case for Brian Fitzgerald who by the time he was 18 could proclaim without reservation, “I want to be a studio potter.” Although the path leading to the point in his career where he was living those words was not the most direct nor the shortest, that’s where Fitzgerald finds himself today – an established studio potter in Door County. (more)

Frostbite Sailing
By Peter D. Sloma

The fall wears on toward winter, and the signs of the changing season are everywhere. As the days get even shorter, the geese as well as the summertime crowds have mostly moved south. The marinas and harbors are emptier after each weekend. As the temperatures fall and the waters of Green Bay darken, sailors might just feel a bit mournful for the end of another sailing season. There is something lonely about those few boats left among the empty mooring balls bobbing in the harbors.
Before long even those moorings will be lifted and stored to prevent them from being iced in. Still, every year a few boats remain right into the first snowfall. One may wonder if these last few boaters are lazy, crazy, or just simply too foolish to realize that the season really is over. As it turns out, it might not quite be over. There may be one good day left. (more)

Re-Presenting
The Works of Bruce Basch
By Cinnamon Rossman

Bruce Basch is one of those rare artists who doesn’t measure his success by the number of works he sells, but rather by the success of new ideas, color nuances and kitschy provocations. Basch lives the kind of in-between life as an artist and waiter that affords the leisure of moving at whim – but always returns to Door County for the summers. His family owns land just on the north side of Ephraim and the site is an historic tract with a view you would take for granted if you lived here all year.
Basch’s weathered little studio sits in this picture perfect scenery like a remnant of life 100 years ago. The wood-frame building was originally built in Minnesota in the 1800s. It was taken apart board by board and pieced back together by Basch in 1970. The land has been in the family since 1865, and gracefully escapes the encroaching developments to the north and the south. The exterior of the studio is a simple wood-sided building, relatively unadorned but for the few collections of stones and pots at the doorstep and a little refrigerator “shrine” in the back which neatly displays a collection of disparate objects – a reflection on manmade versus natural creations. (more)

The Art of the Quilt
Article and Photography by
Sheila Sabrey-Saperstein

In winter of 2006, quilting as an art form came joyfully out of the closet in Door County with the Miller Art Museum’s exhibit of “Quilt National 2005: The Best of Contemporary Fine Art Quilts.” Initiated by the Dairy Barn Cultural Arts Center in Athens, Ohio, this traveling exhibition of 20 quilts was organized to provide a showcase for the transformations taking place in the world of quilting and to extend the definition of quilting beyond the traditional one.
This was the scene August 6, 1953, the night that inaugurated the music festival. But there was more going on than met the eye. (more)

The First Door County Residents: Native American Tribes in Door County
By Sam Perlman

Before Swedes or Norwegians; before Moravians or Belgians. Before Captain Bailey or Increase Claflin; even before French explorers such as Nicolet and Radisson, who began visiting the area in the 17th Century.

For hundreds of years before European exploration and settlement in the Great Lakes region of what we now call the United States, indigenous tribes fished the waters and hunted the forests of the land that would eventually become known as Door County, Wisconsin. (more)