Touring Moonlight Bay + Rieboldt Creek in Door County:
A two-for-one combo, paddlers can explore Moonlight Bay on the lake side of the Door County peninsula and then sneak up Rieboldt Creek at its mouth as far as one cares to, or vice versa, or simply do one and not the other, either way the rewards lie in gorgeous stretches of mostly undeveloped spaces and state natural areas located on a quieter side of the bustling hubbub that is Wisconsin’s Vacationland.
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: June 21, 2026
Skill Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Class Difficulty: Great Lakes Paddling
Put-In + Take-Out:
Rieboldt Creek Parking & Kayak Launch, County Highway Q, Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin
GPS: 45.09631, -87.08187
Time: Put in at 12:00a. Out at 12:00p.
Total Time: 2h
Miles Paddled: 4-14 (10 there-and-back on this specific trip.)
Wildlife:
Swans, hooded mergansers, bald eagles, gulls, white pelicans, terns, egrets, and turtles.
Background:
If advertising is the art of selling you something you don’t need at a price you can’t afford, then maybe serendipity is its opposite: finding something by accident that costs nothing but is invaluable. I had discovered Rieboldt Creek and the easy access to Moonlight Bay only the day before paddling here, and that was thanks to a bike ride – and that was thanks to changing the route mid-ride. Who doesn’t love a happy accident? Allow me to explain (or just skip ahead).
At the risk of mimicking the inimitable Rick Kark, I’d registered for the Peninsula Century Spring Classic, a road ride around Door County, and originally thought I’d pedal the 30-mile route (the short loop, considering there are 50-, 67-, and 100-mile options instead). The first rest station for that route is in Baileys Harbor, but then it only modestly loops back to where the ride started, at Horseshoe Bay Farms south of Egg Harbor. Baileys Harbor is one of my favorite places in Door County, and I hadn’t been there for years, so I was already feeling nostalgic being back again and wasn’t ready just to ride away from it. After looking at the 50-mile route map, I couldn’t resist the allure of riding along forest and coastline. The weather was gorgeous for a long bike ride – cool air, warm sun, a manageable breeze – plus I had never pedaled so many miles in a single outing and liked the idea of bicycling a half-century now that I’m less than a calendar year from turning 50 myself. I had all day, so why not?
The 50-mile route has you on the main road, Highway 57, for half a mile before you turn on County Q to go northeast towards Cana Lighthouse and then west to Ephraim. It’s a particularly picturesque stretch, but one I’d never been down – at least by bike. Honestly, it’s hard to get past The Ridges Sanctuary and easy to end up spending several hours along its vaunted boardwalks and haunting landscape of bogs, swales, and sweet cedars. But County Q takes you along and through a stretch of undeveloped land – often on both sides of the road – that’s about 12 square miles large. For scale, that’s roughly half the size of Washington Island! To name some of the parcels of protected public land, there’s the aforementioned Ridges Sanctuary, Toft Point State Natural Area (SNA), Moonlight Bay Bedrock Beach SNA, Mud Lake State Wildlife Area, and Baileys Harbor Boreal Forest and Wetlands SNA, etc. There’s a lot to love about this part of the peninsula.
I knew that the day after the bike ride I wanted to explore one or a few of these SNAs by boat or boot, but it wasn’t until pedaling up County Q that I saw the following:
- that Rieboldt Creek (which I’d never heard of) naturally flows into Lake Michigan at Moonlight Bay;
- that Rieboldt Creek itself was beguilingly viable as a stream to paddle (and not just pretty to look at but laughably shallow); and
- that there’s an excellent place to park and launch on the creek or bay.
So, I dog-eared the bridge over the creek on my mental map, continued the bike ride, and returned the next day.
When one thinks of paddling Door County, it’s usually the proverbial dilemma of the bay side (west of the peninsula) or the lake side (east of the peninsula) – and that’s usually decided by the direction of the wind and how wavy the water is. But the dilemma takes for granted that it’s an open-water paddle trip, so-called “sea kayaking” in the landlocked Upper Midwest. Rarely does one think of stream paddling, on account of there being so few streams to paddle on the skinny, limestone spine that is Door County and the Niagara Escarpment. Maybe one thinks of the Mink River at Rowley’s Bay (10 miles north of Rieboldt Creek/Mud Lake), but that’s about it. So, it was a very welcome serendipity indeed to literally ride over Rieboldt Creek and know I’d return to explore a place new to me.
Overview:
To my surprise, there were no other vehicles at the County Q bridge, so I just drove up like a rock star, parked, unloaded, and launched. Ridiculous. I was immediately greeted by a dozen trumpeter swans bobbing on the water. Like many Great Lakes paddling excursions, this is basically a choose-your-own-adventure trip. Moonlight Bay is a pocket of water girded by land and mostly protected from the wind. Desirable state natural areas (SNAs) are to be found left (east) and right (west), depending on how much time and curiosity you’ve packed in your boat.
On the right/southwest, stretching for seemingly ever, lies the Toft Point peninsula. It’s a mile-long straight shot across the bay to the hiking trail open to the public. Toft Point was privately owned land that today is a preserved SNA over 700 acres large through a mix of “whites” (cedar, spruce, pine), as well as birch, hemlock, balsam fir, and sugar maple, where hikers can see an original cabin and lime kiln, not to mention the attractive bedrock beach of cobbled dolomite. The back story is commendable.
In the 1870s, much of the limestone comprising this peninsula was quarried until there was little left for commercial applications, so the company did what so many honorable enterprises of capitalism do: paid all its workers a generous severance package while securing them alternative employment opportunities, and honored the local environment that paid everyone an equitable living wage. As if. No, the tycoons filed for bankruptcy and, unable (re: unwilling) to pay the manager, Thomas Toft, they deeded him the “worthless” land instead, upon which Toft would resume quarrying on a small scale. And while much of surrounding Door County was being logged around this time, the Toft family refused to give quarter to axe or saw. To help make ends meet, the family rented out some of the remaining company buildings to tourists in the 1920s. Daughter Emma Toft, aka “Wisconsin’s First Lady of Conservation,” did right by protecting the native forest and also was instrumental in establishing the Ridges Sanctuary (technically contiguous, but essentially separated). A half-century later the property was sold to The Nature Conservancy to be established and protected as an SNA, who later turned it over to the University of Wisconsin System such that UW-Green Bay students use it as an outdoor classroom in environmental studies.
Opposite Toft Point is the Bues Point Boat Ramp and its pier jutting out into the translucent water. Here, according to a historical marker, there “was once upon a time a thriving village…carved out of pristine wilderness” that was home to “a bustling community of hardy pioneers.” Today, it costs money and is used mostly for motorboats, mostly for fishing (although the water is awfully shallow and often rock-bottomed). A few private houses line the shores here, too – descendants of so-called “hardy pioneers” perhaps.
Hooking leftward (and in my case, leeward) around Bues Point brings the iconic Cana Island Lighthouse into full view. Built in 1869, the 89’-tall, rippled, white tower requires a climb up (and then back down) 97 steps along the spiral staircase to get to the top. It also cost $12 per adult to be on the grounds of the lighthouse itself, whether you go inside it and ascend the treads or trust your gut leaning away from claustrophobia and/or acrophobia. It is a very pretty lighthouse, and you can walk around the perimeter of the stone-lined shore without having to pay a dime (pro tip!). It’s not uncommon to find rocks embossed with fossils or uncannily (Cana-ly?) hosting habitat to colorful pops of phlox, courtesy of the Silurian Sea a couple hundred million years ago.
Also, it’s technically a “tombolo,” not an island, so you can easily walk to it from the main peninsula, or hop aboard the eye roll-but-still-kinda-quaint tractor-pulled wagon put-putting over the rock-strewn isthmus.
If you were to go past the lighthouse (due north), to your left would lie the Baileys Harbor Boreal Forest and Wetlands, another SNA that features many of the same famed trees as Toft Point but also a variety of rare orchids (including lady’s slipper for all y’all Mad River canoeligans out there) as well as its bragging rights as being one of the few nesting areas in Wisconsin for the common goldeneye, a diving duck. If you do go out this far, be aware of the wind. In summertime especially, the wind is often from the south, and to return to Moonlight Bay from here is about 2.5 miles straight south. Given the unusually long fetch of Lake Michigan’s north-south shape, the waves such wind can produce are no joke and can easily capsize boats. Know the weather, know what you’d be getting into, and know whether you have the right boat and rescue skills for such a venture.
Turning around now back to County Q, the main attraction on your right is Moonlight Bay Bedrock Beach, another dedicated SNA. Encompassing a skimpy 5 acres, it’s a very attractive wild sweep of dolomite shoreline, rocky cobble, and limestone boulders as big as baby elephants or as small as shoeboxes. If water levels are high on Lake Michigan, the beach could well be submerged. But if not, clamber about! And if you’re there in July, you might be able to gorge on thimbleberries, a real boreal treat that’s like a raspberry and cranberry in one bite. Back on the water, watch out for a strand of rocky shoals here. Again depending on levels, these may be above or just below the water line, but they’ll definitely bruise your boat if you run aground (fiberglass especially). Beyond the beach, also on the right, are a handful of modern houses ranging in size from normal to manse.
That’s the lake side of things. On the other side of County Highway Q is practically a whole separate biome of its own, the two linked by a culvert, where the mouth of Rieboldt Creek meets Moonlight Bay.
To experience Rieboldt Creek, paddlers have two options: launch from Moonlight Bay on the south side of County Q and paddle through the culvert, or park in the designated area on the north side of County Q and launch from the dedicated launch area (a gravel apron). The current is next to nonexistent, so paddling upstream is easy. Indeed, even in a 16.5′ sea kayak it’s easy (although not so easy to turn around, as the creek’s width alone is only twice that).
Let me be clear: it was easy for me at the time of this trip – in late June following a lot of rain the county had had beforehand. In drier spells and later in the summer, especially once the lily pads are prodigious, paddling up could well be tough sledding. On my trip, yellow lotus flowers were still bulbous balls waiting to bud.
Rieboldt Creek begins north of Mud Lake – the primary body of very shallow water it drains – near Old Lime Kiln Road southeast of Ephraim. Despite the whole “name is mud” part, the creek’s waters are clear, and the surrounding landscape is a spooky swamp that truly looks and feels like wilderness. The entire Mud Lake State Wildlife Area is a whopping 2,300 acres large offering shelter to rare plants as well as the federally endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly. To bring it all back full circle (cycle?), I’ve a hunch that it’s this dragonfly who inspired the design of the Peninsula Century Spring Classic bike ride that led me to this place in the first place and inspired this paddle trip.
What we liked:
There is so much to like!
Let’s start with the unassuming simplicity of this trip. There’s no boat launch, no dock, no marina; no state park pass or county park day use fee. Here, you just pull off to the shoulder of the road by the bridge, no different than river paddling. A ten-second schlep later, you’re on Moonlight Bay of Lake Michigan. How easy is that?
What’s not easy is conveying the awesome sense of scale. When you’re plumb bob in the middle of Moonlight Bay, all the world is a plane of blue sky and blue water with little more than a thin line of gray-white rocks and green trees. The world seems huge and beautiful – and it is! The world of nature, the natural world, apart from the human world of chatty gossip and cheating, stupid t-shirts and vain selfies. For a moment, one can forget about all that crap and remember that we are but one-one thousandth of a flyspeck on a billboard, one boat upon the bounty of all Lake Michigan, the second largest freshwater lake on this poor, old planet.
(Incidentally, it was originally called “Mud Bay,” given the proximity of Mud Lake and the creek that connects the two bodies of water. But who wants to go Mud Bay unless you must? Nobody, that’s who. Moonlight Bay, on the other hand? Everybody with a beating heart wants to go there! It evokes a sense of luminescent magic. Talk about rebranding!)
Implicit poetics underscored this trip, too. First, the date: June 21, 2026 or 6-21-26. If you’re half as dorky as I am, you’ll recognize that it’s a numerical palindrome, reading backwards the same it does forward. (So too was 6/20/26 and each day from then until the 30th. The same span of cute dates occurred last year in May and will occur again next year in July – get ready!) This seemed appropriate for an out-and-back excursion ending precisely where it began.
Numbers not your thing? How about paddling a body of water named “Moonlight” on the summer solstice, i.e., the longest day of the year, when we modern-day pagans bow down to that ball of fire in the sky?
I get it – that’s neither here nor there. To be real, it’s just so dang pretty out here! The cedars and hemlocks mixed up with dolomite rocks, cerulean sky, and see-through water from blue velvet to liquid emerald to deep jade along the primitive and mostly undeveloped shoreline… It’s exquisite and gorgeous and why we return to Door Co time after time despite the drive and traffic and congested campgrounds and long waits at restaurants and overpriced everything (looking at you, Land of Lincoln license plates!). It truly is a special place, a sacred place. And this was a really fun paddle with several off-water escapades, diversity and diversions, sights and sites, wide water and narrow stream. Maybe best of all for my poor, still-sore butt from the day before: no shuttling!
What we didn’t like:
Really, nothing.
If we did this trip again:
The only thing I’d do differently is give myself more time to paddle and explore, especially on land.
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Related Information:
General: Lake Michigan State Paddle Trail
Outfitter: Lakeshore Adventures
Photo Gallery:
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