Sturgeon Bay: Fill & Download for Free

I think pictures can give you a better idea of Wisconsin than our position on a map. This is my little corner of the state, Door County, the peninsula that protrudes into Lake Michigan. It’s surrounded by water, divided from the mainland by a shipping canal at Sturgeon Bay. Green Bay lies to the west, Lake Michigan to the east.

It’s no longer called “continental drift” because the continents are actually part of larger rafts of crust called “plates.” All the processes of plate motion actually take place in the oceans, so the preferred term now is “plate tectonics.”The newest evidence, and it’s always new because it’s continually updated, is real-time plate motion data. GPS technology allows us to determine plate motions in real time:See GPS Time Series for a scrollable, zoomable map. Here’s data for a station about 30 miles from me (Sturgeon Bay, WI)You can see we’re moving very slightly southward and pretty steadily westward at about 16 mm/year. Altitude is nearly steady so our post-glacial uplift is pretty much over. This is real time and global. Doesn’t get any better or more current than that.

I live in northern Door County, WI, the “thumb” of Wisconsin that juts into Lake Michigan. While it’s not a bona fide island, it might as well be because the Sturgeon Bay shipping canal cuts it off from the rest of the state. There are three bridges.Door County is lovely, some of the most gorgeous scenery you will ever see.Surrounded by water, its summers are cooler and winters milder than other areas. I lived in the Chicago area for 30 years; its winters were far worse than here. However, Door County’s winters are long, starting about Thanksgiving and lasting through April. When flowers are blooming and trees are turning green elsewhere, we’ve still got snow.While I love living here, it can get boring. Summer is tourist season and residents joke about not being able to make left turns. There are only four grocery stores spread over the entire northern peninsula. The closest supermarkets and big box stores are in Sturgeon Bay, 30 miles from where I live. So are the nearest hospital and cinema. Green Bay, the nearest city, is 80 miles away. While there are many high end shops during tourist season, year-round residents shop online or go to Green Bay.There are numerous cultural and entertainment venues in summer, but in the off-season we have to make our own entertainment. Winter is our “social season” because the residents have time to visit instead of serving tourists. However, our off-season diversions are home grown and unsophisticated, so if one is longing for opera, go to Milwaukee. Many of the restaurants close from October to May, so going out to dinner takes some planning. Did I mention that winter is long?Door County has the oldest demographic of any county in the state; this is where people come to retire. The mean age is 66. Some residents head south or west for at least part of the winter, often in March when the winter has dragged on far too long.Even though I steer clear of the tourist traffic, festivals, and entertainment venues, and bitch about how long winter lasts, I don’t want to live anywhere else. The people are wonderful, the air is clean, the night sky is brilliant with stars, it’s quiet. There is no crime and I don’t lock my doors or car. I rarely need air conditioning. I can hear crickets chirping and birds singing outside my window as I type this. Boring at times, this still is heaven to me.