Today’s post is 1525 words, 30 photos, a 7-minute read. Enjoy!
Hi everyone,
Welcome back to Traveling With Tom. Earlier this month, my Traveling Partner and I spent a couple of weeks back at Potawatomi State Park as campground hosts. The campground was very busy, full on the weekends, and mostly full during the week. This meant we were busy cleaning up campsites after campers checked out. Our experience this year was similar to last year, though we met new staff and a whole array of interesting campers. So here’s a reprise of last year’s post. Take care and enjoy the retelling of the story. Here it goes…..
This week I’ll take you to Door County, Wisconsin, where we served as campground hosts for two weeks at Potawatomi State Park near Sturgeon Bay.
Thanks for all your views and comments on my eight-part series on Walking in the Cotswolds plus our visit to Bletchley Park. It was a fun series to write and share. If you missed any of the episodes, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The Trail to Door County
It was Monday morning, July 28, when we hitched the Minnie (our travel trailer) to the Red Rider (our tow vehicle) for the 190-mile trip from Madison to Door County. Since we arrived a couple of days before our camp-hosting gig began, we checked into an electric site at Potawatomi State Park. We needed the electric site to run the AC in the trailer; the daytime temps the first couple of days were near 90°F (32°C). Fortunately, it cooled off later in the week to a more pleasant 75°F (23-24°C).
Potawatomi State Park
Potawatomi State Park is located on the Green Bay side of the Door County peninsula. It covers about 1200 acres of rolling, rocky, rugged, and mostly forested terrain, with about 2 1/2 miles of shoreline on Sturgeon Bay. The park features camping, group camping, hiking and biking trails, a boat launch, a picnic area, and the recently reopened observation tower. We like this park because it’s less crowded and quieter than Peninsula State Park, 30 miles up the road on the peninsula.
The observation tower officially reopened to the public in May 2025 after a seven-year closure due to structural concerns, wood decay, and safety issues. Built in 1931, the 75-foot tower underwent an emergency restoration project in 2024-2025 to address safety hazards and preserve its historic character, ensuring it is safe for visitors to enjoy the scenic views.
Our climb to the top of the tower left us out of breath, but the views were worth the effort. The skies were hazy due to smoke from the fires in Canada, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. 
Since we were at or above the treetops, it was interesting to see the shapes, patterns, and textures of the tall birch trees.
Other sites in the park include the eastern terminus of the Ice Age Trail and a midsummer view from the Old Ski Hill Overlook.
There’s a new sign outside the office that is located at the park entrance. A couple of years ago, the park superintendent, Erin, asked me (and others) to submit photos for park publicity. One of my photos ended up on the sign below. Can you guess which one I took? It took me a bit of sleuthing to figure out which of the 23 images I sent for consideration was printed on the board. It’s the photo below the title About. I took the photo in the fall of 2018 at what the park calls the Old Ski Hill Overlook. It’s a little hard to see in the photo below, and it was cropped some from the original to fit on the board. 
Here’s the original full image.
Adventures in Campground Hosting
The campground at Potawatomi has 123 sites, with 40 offering electric hookups. During the summer, the campground is busy; on weekends, there aren’t any sites left. The campground has north and south segments. All the electric sites are on the south part of the campground along with several non-electric sites. It’s interesting to note that campers in the non-electric sites are often looking around for a place to charge their phones and other devices. The shower building had electrical outlets and was well used, especially on weekends.
This is a photo of the badly needed new office building under construction at the park entrance. The small brown building in the background is the current office.(Author’s note: The building is finished and quite an improvement over the old administration building. Plus, it also has public restrooms!)
Every morning during our camp hosting gig, we drove the one mile from the campground to the office to pick up the departures and arrivals lists. These lists determined our workload for the day. Most days, Rayna, a summer staff member, had the lists and a pleasant smile ready for us. Rayna also answered the occasional phone calls we made to the office with questions. The most interesting question I asked her was: “What should I do with the bucket of dead minnows that a camper left behind?” After a short discussion, we settled on the fish cleaning station at the boat launch. Believe me when I say it was a very stinky job! Rayna is looking forward to going back to school at UW-Green Bay. 
Meet Erin, the Park Superintendent (she’s on the left), and Morgan, one of the full-time Park Rangers. Morgan contacted us about hosting camp. From 2016 through 2019, we did month-long stints as camp hosts. The pandemic messed with our schedule, but we did camp at Potawatomi a few times since then. It was fun to be back working in the park.
Meet Christa and Matthew, part of the crew that kept the park facilities clean, along with other assigned duties. Christa returns to school at College of the Ozarks, and Matthew will study at UW-Green Bay and work part-time at Potawatomi.
Charlie and his two Springer/Border Collie dogs recruited us to volunteer with the Friends of Potawatomi Park on their regular half-day a week of working in the park. Charlie is the guy with his back to the camera while he was making assignments for the workday.
The two times we helped out, my Traveling Partner and I helped cut up trees that fell in the campground and on the walking trails during a storm. It was hot, sweaty work and the mosquitoes were thick, but otherwise it was pretty good!
I snapped this photo to show nature’s resilience. This tree was felled either by weather or for safety concerns. Yet the stump isn’t ready to give up by sprouting new growth.
Our duties in the campground were to answer questions, provide assistance where needed, and clean up the campsites after campers checked out. Some days we worked a few hours; on Sunday, our busiest day, we worked seven or more hours. By the way, this was a volunteer gig. Our compensation was free camping and meeting a lot of nice people.
We were assigned the “Milk Truck,” an electric utility vehicle with a box on the back that carried our tools, a couple of shovels, a rake, two grabbers or pickers, metal pails, and two garbage cans. During our rounds, we’d drive through the campground to the sites that needed cleaning, scoop out the fire ring, and pick up any trash left behind. Most campers leave their sites neat and clean. But as in life, there are always a few scofflaws. We picked up a lot of bread ties, bottle caps, corners from Hershey bars, and more than the usual number of cigarette butts. My Traveling Partner got tired of hearing me say: “They mustn’t have been in the Army.” This refers back to my time in Army basic training when we had to do “butt patrol” to pick up discarded cigarette butts on the parade grounds. Soldiers learned to field strip their cigarettes and put the filter in their pockets so others didn’t have to pick up after them. (Author’s note: This bread ties won!)
But I digress. Meet Kathleen. On our rounds, we’d see her sitting in her camp chair reading a big, thick book. We speculated she was studying for the bar or a medical exam, or on a retreat to focus on a work project. Since we are both avid readers, we were curious about what she was reading. One day, we saw her getting ready to go someplace, and we pulled over to introduce ourselves. We quickly found out our speculation was way off the mark; Kathleen was reading about the rock group, the Grateful Dead. She had signed up for a seminar titled “What a Long Strange Trip: The Grateful Dead and American Cultural Change” at Björklunden, the Lawrence University retreat campus in Door County. Because of low enrollment, the seminar was canceled, but Kathleen had reserved the campsite for the week and decided to read and explore the park and Door County. It was our pleasure to visit with her and learn a little about her family. Who would have thought the Grateful Dead would bring fans to Door County!
I’ll end this post with a photo of my Traveling Partner and I next to the Milk Truck.
Next week, join me for Part 2 where I’ll take you to some of our favorite places on the Door Peninsula.
Until then, happy travels!
Tom
PS: Click here for a link to the post about my book “Farm Boy.” Contact me if you are interested in purchasing a copy. Thanks to all have plunked down your hard earned dollars and read the book. TM