Five decades of summers on the peninsula, one chart

Who we are

Our family started making the drive north in the 1970s: cherry picking, fish boils, sunsets off the bay side, and the same handful of favorite stops year after year. A lot of us still go, and these days we have a place of our own in Sister Bay, so we're up through every season, not just July.

Over the years the peninsula changed and so did how people find things to do. Friends kept asking where to eat, which beach, what's new, and the honest answer was usually "whatever everyone's been posting lately." So we built a site that keeps track of exactly that.

Why we built it

Guidebooks and "best of" lists are written once and age fast. What people are actually sharing — the new coffee spot in Sturgeon Bay, the trail that's suddenly everywhere in October — moves week to week. Do Door County turns those posts into a live map, so you can see what's drawing people right now and decide for yourself.

How the chart works

1. We collect public posts. Each week we gather public Instagram and TikTok posts about Door County, from hashtags, location tags and the accounts of places already on the chart.
2. We read each one. The caption, any spoken words and, when needed, text in the photos are read to find the specific places a post is about. Town names and general "Door County" posts don't count as a place.
3. We match it to a real place. Each place is checked against its public Google listing for location and hours, and repeat posts about the same place are added to it rather than creating duplicates.
4. We review. Suggestions land in a review queue before they're published, and we remove mentions that turn out to be tags rather than real visits.
5. We rank. A place's rank is the number of posts that mentioned it in the last 30 days. Each month's final ranking is saved permanently on the trending page.

Every post is credited to the creator who made it, with a link back to the original.

What is — and isn't — paid for

The chart can't be bought. No business pays to appear on it, and no one can pay to move up it. Rankings come only from what people post.

To keep the site running we may include clearly labeled sponsored itineraries ("Presented by…") and promotions, and we sell some of our own merch in the shop. None of that affects the ranking.

Event listings come from the Door County Pulse calendar and are always credited and linked to the original.

Say hello

Spotted something we missed, a place listed wrong, or a post that shouldn't be counted? We read everything at help@dodoorcounty.com.