First stop in Door County on July 5: the town of Sturgeon Bay, county seat and tourist magnet during the summer.  Wisconsin 57 connects the city of Green Bay with the town, which straddles the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal.

The canal, which started as a bit of Victorian engineering – it was completed in 1881 – means that ships out of the city of Green Bay don’t have to go all the way around the Door Peninsula to get to Milwaukee or Chicago. It also cuts Door County in two, making part of it a large island, though no one seems to think of it that way.

Sturgeon Bay was a fairly busy place on the day after the Fourth of July, but not so crowded that we couldn’t find a convenient parking space and, at about noon, a place to eat without waiting for a table. At the corner of Third and Louisiana streets is the Inn at Cedar Crossing, which I thought was a fanciful name for the restaurant where we had lunch, but it turns out there’s a bed and breakfast upstairs, and Third used to be called Cedar. Whatever the story, the place serves a satisfying lunch.

Third is one of the town’s main streets, featuring a mix of tourist businesses and everyday-need retailers. Also along the street are sturgeon statues. They’re part of “Sturgeon Around the Bay,” one of the many descendants of CowParade, which the city of Chicago helped popularize in 1999.

This particular one is called “Bon Appetit,” created by Chonda Hoschbach and Cori Rosen.  I looked at it for a minute before I realized it was made mostly of stainless-steel spoons, with some forks thrown in. According to the plaque that comes with the fish, the works will be auctioned on September 21, just as the tourist season is winding down. The beneficiary will be the Sturgeon Bay Visitor Center.