Fish Creek is the heart of the peninsula's summer life. It sits on the edge of Green Bay at the entrance to Peninsula State Park, one of Wisconsin's best loved parks, and its lanes of wooden shops, galleries and small hotels are busy from June to October. Alexander Noble, who settled here in the 1850s, built a dock and a business around the harbour, and his name remains attached to the village's most historic house.
Peninsula State Park is the draw. It covers thousands of acres of limestone bluffs, forest and shoreline, with a scenic drive that winds through the woods and up to Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, a handsome white building from the 1860s that stands above the water. The park's cliffs drop almost vertically to the bay, and from the observation tower the view takes in islands and distant shores. A few minutes south of the village is one of the oldest professional summer theatres in the country, the Peninsula Players, which performs in a garden setting among the trees.
For the rider, this is the one place on the peninsula where you will want to leave the bike for a while. The park road is slow, with a low speed limit and a lot of cyclists, but it is lovely, passing cedars and birches and, in autumn, flaring maples. Outside the park, Highway 42 runs through the village and can be congested in summer. The best way to enjoy it is to come early or late in the day and let the traffic go by.
Services are fair: there are shops, restaurants and a couple of small stores, but fuel is limited, so top up before you come. Sturgeon Bay, about thirty kilometres south, is the dependable base for anything bigger.
Door County has a tradition of the fish boil, in which whitefish and potatoes are cooked in a big kettle over a wood fire, and the cook throws kerosene on the flames at the end to make the pot boil over and carry away the oil. It is a theatrical performance as well as a meal, and Fish Creek is one of the best places to see it. Even if you do not stay for dinner, you will smell the wood smoke drifting through the village on a summer evening.