Author: Freya Callahan

I only meant to grab a quick bite on the way home, but a pair of giant winking hot dogs on a rooftop changed the…

A gravel shoulder, a horse-drawn buggy rolling past, and a parking lot so full it looked like a county fair. That was the first sign…

From the sidewalk, it looks like an ordinary corner grocery, the kind you might pass a hundred times without a second glance. Step inside, though,…

I went in for a box of granola bars and came out pushing a cart I had not planned to fill. This warehouse-sized discount store…

The smell hits first, a sweet cloud of wood smoke drifting down a narrow side street, and suddenly a quick walk turns into a detour….

I only pulled in because I needed a cheap box fan, and I walked out an hour later pushing a cart full of things I…

I only meant to take a quick detour off the highway in central Illinois, but a cluster of old brick buildings on a hill made…

A quick stop for a snack on a drive through Illinois is not supposed to change how you shop. Then you open a paper bag,…

I only stopped because I needed a quiet hour away from the car and the kids needed to stretch their legs. A modest entrance off…

Snow was piling up outside when we ducked into an unassuming museum, expecting a quick look at a few stuffed birds. Twenty minutes later, a…

Nobody plans a family outing around a grocery store. Then you walk through the doors of a Japanese market in Illinois, smell miso broth drifting…

A roadside sign promising pumpkins seemed like a simple errand on a crisp Illinois afternoon. Then came the smell of apple cider donuts, the squeals…

We only pulled off the highway to find a pumpkin and maybe a warm donut. Then we saw the corn, taller than any adult in…

Nobody warned me the best seat in the house would belong to a three-year-old. We had ducked inside to escape a gusty lakefront afternoon in…

My kids spotted the track before I did, a winding ribbon curling down a grassy hill in the northwest corner of Illinois, right above the…

Nobody warned me that a quick stop at a small toy shop in Illinois could turn into a whole afternoon of spinning tops, puppet shows,…

The smell hits you before the door even shuts: warm sugar, butter, and bread pulled from the oven maybe twenty minutes ago. At Mexican bakeries…

Pull up to an Illinois steakhouse with dark wood booths and low lighting, and there’s a decent chance a chilled tray of pickles, crisp vegetables,…

Pull off an Illinois two-lane road around mid-afternoon and you might spot a handwritten sign in a diner window promising fresh pie. Inside, there’s usually…

My kids have opinions about pizza, and most of them are wrong. But the first time they tugged at a slice with a dark, crackly…

Driving north through Illinois on a Saturday morning, you pass a lot of exits that promise nothing much. One of them leads to a 72-acre…

Hunger has a way of showing up at the worst moment, usually on a stretch of Illinois road where nothing looks promising. Then a low…

Cornfields and barns are not what most people picture when they think about a drive through Chicago’s northern suburbs. Yet tucked between subdivisions and busy…

My kids have a rule about road trips in western Illinois: there has to be an animal at the end of it. What we found…

Most fall outings in Illinois follow a familiar script: pick a pumpkin, snap a photo, head home. Then you pull into a farm where a…

An hour north of Chicago, past the strip malls and the cornfields, sits a cluster of buildings in northern Illinois that looks unremarkable from the…

A gray sky used to mean the whole day was canceled when I was a kid in Illinois. Turns out that was never really true….

Breakfast in Illinois usually means eggs, toast, and a stack of flapjacks you forget about by lunchtime. Then there’s the plate that arrives at one…

The smell hits you before the door even closes behind you: warm sugar, melted butter, and chocolate being folded over on a marble slab. Illinois…

A concrete is frozen custard blended so dense that a spoon planted in the middle just stays there, standing at attention like a little flag….

Driving through central Illinois, the corn goes on forever and then suddenly a fiberglass head appears above the treeline. That first double-take is how most…

Rain has a way of ruining a Saturday plan in Illinois, especially when the kids already have their shoes on and the park is off…

There is a storefront on the far South Side of Illinois where the pastry case holds a fritter roughly the size of your face. It…

Somewhere between the cornfields and the county highways of Illinois, a giant white screen lights up after sunset and a whole parking lot goes quiet…

Somewhere west of Chicago, past the strip malls and subdivisions, an old wooden gate opens onto 54 acres of grass, water, and the sound of…

Somewhere along an old stretch of highway in central Illinois, there’s a low brick building with two smiling hot dogs painted on the sign out…

Somewhere on the South Side of Illinois’s biggest city, there’s a little walk-up window where asking for one cone gets you five flavors at once….

Somewhere in southern Illinois, the flat farmland gives up and the ground buckles into hills, curves, and rock walls tall enough to swallow a school…

Some of the best meals in Illinois happen in towns you would drive past without blinking. A marble counter installed in the 1930s still runs…

Driving through east-central Illinois, you expect grain elevators and a stoplight or two, not a rocking chair taller than a five-story building. But one farm-country…

Somewhere in northern Illinois, past a stretch of highway that gives away nothing, there is a 1,700-acre tree collection that most people assume is just…

Some road trips through central Illinois turn into a blur of cornfields and grain silos, and then a gravel turnoff changes the whole afternoon. Twenty-three…

Somewhere past the cornfields of northern Illinois, a whistle cuts through the quiet and a century-old coach rolls by with its windows wide open. It…

Somewhere in southern Illinois, a small river town keeps a surprise parked at the base of a tall bluff. You buy a ticket, stand on…

Way down at the southern tip of Illinois, where the state runs out of road and the Ohio River takes over, there is a limestone…

Most people picture Illinois as flat farmland stretching to the horizon, which makes the far southern corner of the state feel like a plot twist….

Somewhere in northern Illinois, less than an hour from skyscrapers and expressway traffic, there is a patch of ground that shivers underfoot. It looks like…

The smell hit me before the sign did: warm sugar, cider, and cut cornstalks drifting across a gravel parking lot somewhere in rural Illinois. I…

Somewhere in southern Illinois, just off a highway most people speed right past, there is a grass-covered hill that turns out to be one of…

Somewhere between the cornfields and the river towns of Illinois, the flat land splits open into narrow stone corridors with waterfalls tucked inside them. Most…

A wrong turn off a two-lane road in Illinois one October afternoon led me to a gravel lot, a wooden trail sign, and a canopy…

The forecast said sun. Two hours into a family road trip across Illinois, the windshield wipers were working overtime and the picnic blanket stayed folded…

Somewhere in central Illinois, about twenty minutes past the last stoplight you’d think mattered, there is a small lake with old Santa Fe train cabooses…