Door County Day 2

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Door County sure lived up to the hype as a top vacation destination today. What a fantastic day I had exploring. Today was like a fall day, bright, sunny but crisp. I don’t think it got above 65 all day and was windy.

I went to two State Parks, two County Parks, two wineries, and two lighthouses. Of course I saw lots of great barns and other things along the way as well.

I visited Cave Point County Park followed by Whitefish Dunes State Park. What a dramatic and stark contrast less than one mile apart on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Cave Point has rocks, bluffs and caves which have been carved out over the years by constant waves. You go right around the point and end up on a sandy white beach in the state park. They even have sand dunes (one was called Old Baldy). I spent a little over an hour walking on trails in the sand dunes. Unlike the sand dunes on the Outer Banks, these have more vegetation on them.

Later in the day I visited Cana Island Lighthouse (on Lake Michigan) near Bailey’s Harbor where I’m staying. After dinner, I drove to Peninsula State Park between Fish Creek and Ephraim. Eagle Bluff Lighthouse is located in that park.

They also have a drive-in theater which is still operational near Peninsula State Park. I drove by it, but after sunset so didn’t get a great shot of it.

But the highlight of the day and possibly the trip was at my first “stop” of the day. On the drive to Cave Point, I stopped and walked along the Lake Michigan shore. Several hundred yards down the beach I saw 50 to 100 sea gulls AND some Canadian Geese. I decided that was an unusual (to me anyway) combination of birds of a feather flocking together so I started walking towards them to get a little closer view. I had a wide angle lens on one camera body and my 70-200 telephoto on the other. After a few minutes I noticed an unexpected flurry of activity. The seagulls started screaming and flew off in mass. I had only seen three geese initially, but there must have been a dozen or more and as the sea gulls flew, they all waddled in line to the water and started swimming. Expecting them to fly I put my camera with the telephoto lens on motor drive. All of a sudden I caught movement in the sky above me.

It was a Bald Eagle with a large fish in its talons!!!!! That was what caused the alarm in the other birds. I didn’t have my best telephoto lens for a distant bird shot, but since I had a medium telephoto in hand I was able to fire off four shots. Two of them are included here in the blog. I cropped them a little. The last image I captured (but haven’t included here) shows a sea gull flying behind and above the eagle. I don’t know if he was trying to drive the eagle away from the other gulls, make the eagle drop the fish or something else.

At any rate it was a special moment. And I was excited a 2nd time when I uploaded the images and saw I had captured him in flight with the fish.

It’s getting late so I’m going to wind down and get this uploaded.

I don’t know if I’ll have access and time to update the next couple of days. I get on the road for the mountains in the morning. Friday evening I’ll be south of Gary, Indiana, and Saturday I’ll overnight in Berea, KY.

Hope you enjoy the images from the day. As always, thanks for checking in.

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