Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
If you're going to Door County, you're required by law (at least by the law of local
cuisine imbibing) to sample the following:
•
Lingonberry pancakes at Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant.
Although
the pancakes are good, the main reason people go to Al's is to snap
pictures of the goats on the restaurant's sloping, grass-covered roof.
Al
Johnson's Swedish Restaurant, 702 N. Bay Shore Drive, Sister Bay, WI
54234, 800-241-9914 or 920-854-2626, www.aljohnsons.com.
•
A fish boil at the White Gull Inn.
Found only in Door County, a fish
boil is something you watch, as well as eat. Freshly caught Lake Michigan
whitefish are cut into chunks and thrown with small red potatoes into a
big black kettle and boiled over an open fire. When the fish is just right,
the master boiler adds a splash of kerosene to the fire and ignites a huge
flame that impels the fish oils to boil wildly over the side of the kettle.
White Gull Inn, 4225 Main Street, Fish Creek, WI 54212, 888-364-9542 or
920-868-3517, www.whitegullinn.com.
•
Giant pecan cinnamon rolls at Grandma's Swedish Baker at the
Wagon Trail Resort,
Rowleys Bay. They're big, hot, and beyond compare.
Wagon Trail Resort, 1041 County Road ZZ, Ellison Bay, WI 54210,
888-559-2466 or 920-854-2385, www.wagontrail.com/pages/bakery.html.
That was certainly Jensen's intention. He envisioned the Clearing as a place for people
to reassess their lives. He figured that if you spend an entire vacation examining what's im-
portant to you, reconnecting with the natural world, and learning about topics you tend to
overlook during your workaday life, you'll probably get a truer vision of what's important.
Jensen started the school in 1935 when he was 75 years old. Even then, he was able to
predict that cars would take over his adopted country and that most Americans would live in
cities and suburbs, far from the wisdom of nature. He envisioned The Clearing as a “school
of the soil” where people could renew their inner selves and develop meaningful values for
their lives and professions.
Although Jensen, who spearheaded the Illinois state park system and designed the estates
of Armour, Florsheim, Ford, and other American industrialists, died in 1951, his school for
growing a life is alive and thriving. The Clearing has been an independent nonprofit since
1988 after being run for years by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau with help from the University
of Chicago, which took up the mantle after Jensen's death.
