To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, Major League Baseball is hosting Fourth of July festivities at four drive-in theaters across the country. One is in our proverbial backyard.
Up in Lakemoor, Illinois, the McHenry Outdoor Theater will play host to MLB’s Fourth of July outing, featuring a screening of “The Sandlot” followed by a screening of the Cubs-Cardinals game, along with family-friendly activities, baseball-themed games and fan experiences. All capped off with fireworks.
That’s a heavy dose of Americana.
(Other hosts include theaters in Paramount, California; Blue Ridge, Georgia; and Vineland, New Jersey.)
The McHenry Outdoor Theater is situated in an oft-overlooked but charming corner of northern Illinois. It sits not far off Route 12, once the gateway for travelers leaving Chicago for Lake Geneva and other summer hot spots. Once you get past Deer Park and Lake Zurich, you start to feel like you can stretch your legs a little bit away from the suburban sprawl.
Families thinking about hitting the outdoor theater should know there’s enough going on to make a day trip out of it — also along Route 12 is the Volo Museum, part auto museum replete with everything from classic cars to military vehicles, and part Jurassic Park, including a garden of giant dinosaur replicas. Really.
A little ways beyond the theater is the charming village of Richmond, which boasts a century-old chocolatier — Anderson’s Candy Shop — that hand-dips its own candies, alongside a small but charming downtown and nearby Glacial Park, over 3,400 acres of prairieland, hiking and biking trails and wildlife.
Clearly, the Americana up here extends far beyond the Fourth of July confines of the outdoor screen.
One of the things we’ve enjoyed most about the World Cup is how serving as a host has introduced international visitors to corners of the United States they otherwise might never have seen. It’s one reason we lamented Chicago’s absence from the list of host cities — we have a great deal to show off.
MLB’s Fourth of July celebration operates on a smaller scale, but the same idea applies. By selecting the McHenry Outdoor Theater as one of only four sites nationwide, it is shining a spotlight on a corner of Illinois that has plenty to offer. And, at a time when just about half of Americans have even stepped foot in a movie theater within the past year, McHenry County has found a way to make an outdoor movie theater — an increasingly rare species — endure.
That’s worth celebrating, too. And if all goes well, the Cubs will give the crowd one more reason to cheer.
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