“Let’s go to Misty Mountain,” my friend said.
I’d never been but was intrigued, and the others in our group seemed enthusiastic.
So we went. It was in Glenwood.
This was a long time ago, when a surplus of energy and lack of anything better to do often led to adventure for our late ’80s group of pals.
This particular quest led us to the shrubby forest across the street from what was then known as Glenwood School for Boys, down a lonely stretch of single-track railroad to the abrupt slope of powdery, sandy material that seemed to be slowly assaulting the tree line, emulating the glacial movement of the Indiana Dunes.
Up we went, each step sinking through the mystery material, slowing our ascent to our own version of glacial movement. Night had fallen by the time we made the top, and we were greeted above the treetops by the sight of the far-off lights of Chicago skyscrapers to the north and the nearer pinpoints of Thornton’s industrial rock quarry structures.
That vista was our reward, and we’d worked hard to get to it, scrambling up what seemed to be a giant pile of waste material from the nearby quarry.
Having approached from the wooded west, no signs had advised us to keep out. Nobody was there to threaten us with punishment for trespassing. Perhaps Misty Mountain, which we’d named after a Led Zeppelin song, was comprised of toxic waste, but we had no way of knowing.
Risk aversion wasn’t even at the back of our minds. We’d found a secret spot. There was nothing up there except for a pretty good view, but that was enough. We imagined returning on July 4 so we could watch fireworks fly from afar in all the surrounding towns.
There’s a lasting magic in secret spots, places we’ve discovered that become, for a short while, all our own.
Misty Mountain Top became one of our hidden gems, like the mysterious cement “Pillbox” in Joe Orr Woods, or the mostly dry creek culvert under Ashland Avenue in Chicago Heights, where we left important Sharpie-scrawled messages such as “Andy is fat!”
As we descended from Misty Mountain, we vowed to return often. But the trip was sufficiently arduous that we rarely, if ever, did. None of us had any overt reactions to exposure to whatever it was we climbed, and the place lived on in our lore.
As we got older and our circles expanded, our hidden gems became less hidden but more numerous. Once we had better access to vehicles, our arduous climbing spot became the giant Mount Baldy sand dune in Indiana, which had a parking lot and was far more fun to run or roll down. Restaurants and dive bars became more convenient hangouts than the woods after jobs gave us some spending cash, and adventure was to be had through outings such as overnight ski trips to Wisconsin.
When the new Visitors Guide was released last month by the Chicago Southland Convention and Tourism Bureau, a segment called “Hidden Gems” took my mind back to my youthful adventures exploring places like Misty Mountain.
“These are places that are off the beaten path, said Kim Kislowski, a marketing official who has been with the Chicago Southland CVB since the 1990s. “They’re little adventures that offer something different.”
It’s an eclectic list that showcases facets of the area that aren’t quite as hidden as Misty Mountain, a feature more concealed than hidden, my friends and I later speculated.
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But they’re less prominent than the “big attractions” of the south suburbs, Kislowski said, noting that while we don’t have “large destination drivers” such as Great America, the area is home to places we can rightfully be proud of, like the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park on the campus of Governor’s State University in University Park.
Lots of people have heard of the sculpture park. But they may not have heard about the historic Paarlberg Park in South Holland, or Lotton Art Glass and Studio in Crete. They haven’t had a chance to step back in time at the 1950s Park Forest House Museum or sip a craft cocktail in the state’s oldest standing brewery or suffer brain freeze after wolfing down old-school ice cream at the century-old Gayety’s in Lansing.
The bureau’s Hidden Gems list also includes Southland destinations that may be a bit more well known, but to niche groups, like “Railfan Viewing Sites” in Homewood, Park Forest, Dolton and Blue Island and the animal fan site, The Children’s Farm at The Center in Palos Park.
And the list travels further afield for a few entries, such as the historic windmill in Peotone, the Bronzville Children’s Museum in Chicago and the Shrine of Christ’s Passion in St. John, Indiana.
While some of the “Hidden Gems” section of the visitor’s guide don’t seem all that hidden to some of us who’ve been here for a while, it’s a way to draw attention to some of the good stuff the area has to offer that might otherwise languish in the small-type lists elsewhere in the guide.
“We’re not a vacation destination where people come and stay for a week,” Kislowski said. “But we’re a good weekend getaway, or a three-day trip.”
The target audience includes people who travel here for their kids’ sports tournaments and then are looking for something to do afterward. And they encourage area residents to peruse the guide as well.
“Locals are our tourism ambassadors,” she said. “When you bring family and friends in from out of town, you want to bring them to an attraction or restaurant. Locals need to know what there is, and they don’t always know all there is to know.”
The bureau stocks the guide, which was published last month, in all Illinois welcome centers, and pays to have it available at visitors centers in Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.
“We are a five-hour drive from eight states,” Kislowski said.
And, of course, it helps to be adjacent to Chicago, said Chicago Southland CVB spokesman Andy Ritter.
“People can stay here and take the Metra downtown — even group tours don’t want to pay to park the bus downtown,” he said. “Chicago is a draw, and we want them to come out and experience our destinations too.”
Over the years, the visitors guide has had to adopt to the changing nature of the area’s attractions. Where water parks may have once been the hot selling point, Kislowski points now at outdoor offerings such as hiking opportunities on the area’s network of forest preserve trails.
The pandemic ushered in a popularity resurgence for golf courses, and the south suburbs are stacked with at least 32 facilities that are public or semiprivate, Kislowski said.
“We’re positioned very well,” she said.
And they’re always on the lookout for the next hidden gem.
“We are very busy, so it’s hard to get out and about,” Kislowski said. “So when we do I’m glad because it reaffirms for me what we have, how beautiful our area is.”
Part of the trick to finding hidden gems is recognizing the beauty in the places we explore, be it a golf course such as Ravisloe in Homewood that is so endowed with trees that it was certified as an arboretum, or an old pile of quarry slag.
Even if it still exists, I’m certain Glenwood’s Misty Mountain will never make it into the Chicago Southland Visitor’s Guide, with good reason as the mid-80s adventure of my friends and I was dangerous and probably illegal. In retrospect.
But it still stands out decades later as a great memory, and a reminder that we don’t have to travel very far to find our own hidden gems.
Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at [email protected].