Fun Ways to See Fall Colors
By Donna Marie Pocius
Special to DoorCountyNavigator.com

  
In Door County, it's fun to oooh and ahhh at the green turning gold. For example, you can take a trolley tour or hike a trail to see colorful leaves this fall.
 
Fall Trolley to Beacons
While aboard an old-style trolley, you discover four of the 11 Door Peninsula  lighthouses.
 
Door County Trolley travels the Peninsula, adorned with breathtaking color on its Lake Michigan side and along the Green Bay waters, during five-hour "Door County Lighthouse Tours" (through Oct. 31).  Beacons on the tour are Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, Cana Island Lighthouse, Baileys Harbor Range Lights and Cana Station Lighthouse.
 
"We have water background to the colors; that is the major attraction here," said A. J. Frank, president of the trolley company. "We have the color blue coming through and a lot of golds and oranges and reds with the oak and maple trees. And people go 'ga ga' over Door County lighthouses."
 
A shorter scenic tour (one-hour long) is also available through October.
 
The bright red motorized trolley is reminiscent of streetcar travel during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Its open-air style affords about 25 passengers with good seats for looking at fall foliage and the old beacons.  
 
"It is a fun way of getting to those different spots.  You get off the highways and learn the history of the area," Frank said.
 
Hike to Celebrate Autumn
Whitefish Dunes State Park is a Door Peninsula treasure, affording 14 miles of hiking trails during fall.  Don't miss the park's diverse yellow trail.   While on this 4.2-mile trail, you walk through a hardwood forest, cross meadows, smell a pine plantation and go past a creek.
 
Hikers must push through sand and step over rocks and tree roots. Bring your camera, because the yellow trail affords stunning colorful vistas of meadows framed by pine, birch and maple trees.
 
"We have a lot of open vistas. You can pull away and see a site," explained
Carolyn Rock, park naturalist.  "And we still have a lot of green in the fall because of our pine. It's green, then bam! yellow, bam! red."
 
Other Colorful Ideas
Try a bike ride or take a country drive. Don't forget to get off the strips of Highways 42 and 57 to take in all the diverse Peninsula has to offer. There are also inland roads dotted with farms, fields and all that's fantastic in fall.
 
As Rock puts it, "Fall is the best time of year."

Peninsula Players on New Stage Through Oct.19
By Donna Marie Pocius
Special to DoorCountyNavigator.com

  
At the Peninsula Players, audiences seem to be relishing the new theater's ambiance as well as the acting.
 
The actors perform "in the garden" and on the coast in Fish Creek.  Near capacity summer crowds have filled the new theater, which replaced a dire structure in 2006. Performances of "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure," continue through Oct. 19.
 
The new audience pavilion seats 621 people in comfortable seats and on a floor that offers up enhanced sight lines as well as radiant heating. Also constructed was a new stage and support space for actors and staff.
 
"The story we have to tell is a good one and a positive one: just what a big step up this has been for us, for audience comfort and convenience and for capacity. And what we can do in the theater for them," said Alan Kopischke, development director.
 
The Peninsula Players playbill calls "The Final Adventure" a play filled with danger, intrigue, humor and surprise."