This is a map of the Niagara Escarpment, borrowed from Wikimedia. I can’t vouch for the details, but the general outline seems to agree with other maps I’ve seen.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we visited the east end of the escarpment, where big water flows over a big cliff. Over Labor Day weekend, we visited the west end of the escarpment, where big cliffs overlook big water. That is, Door County, Wisconsin, surrounded by Green Bay and Lake Michigan proper. (The map also fills me with notions of visiting the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island, though those would be a mite harder to reach from metro Chicago.)

Not our first trip to Door, of course. And maybe not the best time to visit the Door peninsula, since crowds converge there on summer weekends. Still, the place holds its crowds fairly well, except for the narrow streets passing through such towns as Egg Harbor, Fish Creek, Sister Bay and Bailey’s Harbor.

We drove to the town of Green Bay on Saturday, leaving not particularly early, eating takeout Chinese for lunch at an obscure park in Germantown, a far north suburb of Milwaukee, where Yuriko thought there ought to be German food. There is a place called Von Rothenburg Bier Stube there, but we weren’t in the market for that.

West of Germantown is Hubertus, home of Holy Hill Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians, which we visited. We arrived in the town of Green Bay late in the afternoon and settled in for takeout pizza from a joint with an Irish name.

Our visit to Door County on Sunday was essentially a day trip from Green Bay. It might be better someday to actually pay Door County prices and stay in Door County, to allow more time to explore the place. The county isn’t very large — only 482 square miles of land — but it packs in the tourist attractions, natural and manmade. Tourists have been coming for a long time, with resorts first developed just after the Civil War, and the industry really kicking into gear with better roads and cars of the 1920s.

My plans were vague, and we often went where whim took us, such as the lighthouse and pier at the south end of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, a walk along a beach, lunch in the crowded but still pleasant Egg Harbor, and visits along the shore of Green Bay, with its sweeping vistas.

We made it to the tip of the peninsula — I’d long wanted to go there — where the ferry disembarks for Washington Island, but the day was running out, so we didn’t go there. That would be a fitting destination from a base camp closer than the town of Green Bay, I think.

On Monday, we spent part of the morning poking around the town of Green Bay, including a look at a few churches, cemeteries, and city hall. Afterward, the drive back was straightforward and not that interesting, though we had another nice lunch in suburban Milwaukee.

All in all, a good little trip. Saw a few things you can only see in Wisconsin, such as this Green Bay item (maybe made here).For the record, that cheesehead hat was taped onto the dinosaur’s head.