Almost half of Americans are planning a fall trip, and small towns are attracting travelers

Autumn may be the best time of year to travel, but it’s not just because of the changing leaves. There were fewer people, the pace was slower, and the small town that had been swamped with tourists all summer finally had some breathing room. Being able to arrive somewhere without having to worry about waiting lists, traffic, or a packed itinerary in the lead up to your actual vacation is really appealing.

A recent survey found that nearly half of U.S. adults are planning a trip this fall, with cars far more popular than domestic flights, and 25% choosing small towns as their preferred destination. Millennials in particular rent cars for travel at nearly four times the rate of baby boomers.

Door County, Wisconsin is a near-textbook example of this trend. The 106-mile Coastal Byway connects small waterfront communities, orchards, parks, and historic sites, making it especially suitable for car-heavy fall travel like the one described in the Hertz study.

As the air cools, the village of Ephraim trades its summer hustle and bustle for a cozy, laid-back atmosphere. Cool mornings, quiet docks, and a historic district with décor that looks straight out of a postcard. A stroll along the waterfront takes visitors past Anderson Dock and onto the new North Side Path. Both are crowded in July, but almost empty in October.

Shops will also slow down. End your day by browsing the resale racks at Simple Solutions, grabbing a coffee at LeRoy’s Water Street Coffee, or playing a round at Red Putter Mini Golf.

At Sister Bay and Fish Creek, harvesting is the main event. Seaquist Orchards, a multi-generational family business with 30 acres of apple trees, offers pick-your-own weekends through October, and the farm market sells cider, jam and pie fillings made with apples from the trees.

A few miles south of Fish Creek, Lautenbach’s Orchard Country has been family-owned and operated since 1955, growing 10 varieties of apples on 100 acres of orchards and vineyards. Estate wines and hard ciders are made on-site, and the bakery’s cherry pies draw lines long after the cherry customers have left. Both facilities will be open through the fall, allowing visitors to spend weeks instead of days visiting.

Fall foliage in Door County is best seen on foot, along a scenic highway that passes through the heart of the village. Established in 1910, Peninsula State Park includes sugar maple and birch trails that weave through bluffs more than 150 feet above the water and the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, built in 1868.

In Baileys Harbor, Ridges Sanctuary, a nonprofit nature preserve established in 1937, offers naturalist-led fall foliage walks along an 8-mile trail to the Baileys Harbor Range Lights. A causeway leads to Cana Island and the lighthouse, and 97 steps lead to the gallery deck, offering views across the peninsula. None of it is tied to a single festival weekend. The lighthouse and trail are open for self-guided tours throughout the season.

Not all stops on the peninsula operate at resort speeds. Sturgeon Bay is the county seat and has a waterfront with a thriving shipbuilding industry, allowing the town to remain open year-round without closing down after the summer.

The Door County Maritime Museum attracts approximately 95,000 visitors a year to its three facilities, including the Sturgeon Bay campus and the Cana Island Lighthouse site in Baileys Harbor, and offers boat tours aboard the schooner Utopia and the tug John Purves, along with wooden boatbuilding classes. It’s a working-class town that contrasts with the postcard villages of the upper peninsula, and fall is the easiest time to see both sides of Door County in one trip.

In October, the atmosphere extends beyond a single village. Fish Creek and Sister Bay storefronts welcome the season with pumpkins and string lights, kids go trick-or-treating on Main Street, and Egg Harbor wineries and art galleries fill up as the leaves change along Whitecliff Road. None of them are scheduled around the weekend on the calendar. That’s what the peninsula looks like after the summer traffic jams have cleared and the people living here have reclaimed their villages for a few months.

Those wishing to go further afield can take a five-mile ferry across the strait known as Death’s Door to Washington Island, which has a year-round population of about 600 people. It has over 60 miles of quiet backroads perfect for biking, running, and paddling. Every fall, the islanders press their own cider from the apples grown there. This is the peninsula’s clearest answer to the simple question, “How far are you willing to go to actually escape?”