The Seven Wonders of Wauconda, Illinois

I don’t have the time or resources to be on a road trip all the time. So, to fill in the gaps, I’ve decided to take one-day road trips to towns within driving distance. I’ll wander about, take some photos, eat where the locals eat — and talk with the locals if they seem friendly — then do a post about the seven most interesting things I saw and did in the town. What follows is my first adventure.

Wauconda is named after an Indian chief who is thought to be buried where the town is located. The first white settler was Justus Bangs, and the lake in town is named Bangs Lake in his honor. The town started out as a stagecoach stop on the route between Chicago and Janesville, Wisconsin. That’s probably pushing the limits of what you want to know about Wauconda.

I drove over on a Saturday in early November to explore.

Wonder #1 — Entrance ramp onto Route 12

Have you ever seen The Blue Brothers? Than you’ve seen this spot before.

Wonder #2 — Whippletree Farm Antiques

The guy behind the counter took one brief glance in my direction and decided I wouldn’t be buying anything. In this case, he was right. The store was filled with very pricey antiques, including a two-inch long silver bulldog figurine selling for $1,300. There were a few things in my spontaneous-purchase price range, several old irons for example, but we already own several antique irons, so I left empty-handed.

Wonder #3 — Frank’s Karma Cafe

I stopped in here for lunch.

It was a tiny place, with seven tables and 18 chairs. I ordered my food and sat down at a table by the window. Here’s what it looked like when I sat down.

Twenty minutes later when I was about to leave, it looked like this.

I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, which didn’t change my life in a significant way, but was pretty good.

They don’t sell pies by the slice, so I ordered a mini cherry pie. They make a huge deal on their web site about using lard in the crust. It wasn’t a bad pie, certainly better than any mass-produced pie, but the crust didn’t have a lot of taste and crumbled to bits. My wife’s butter crust is far superior. (I ate half the pie and brought the rest home to my wife. She enjoyed it, but also thinks her crust is better.)

A woman sat down at the table next to mine and asked me what kind of pie I picked. I told her, then asked her if she was a local. She was, so I said, “What’s the one thing in town a visitor should see before he leaves?” She thought for a minute, then thought some more. A couple at a nearby table were listening in, and I saw the wife look at her husband and smirk. When the pause had gotten embarrassingly-long, the woman said, “In the summer, the lake is pretty.” Then she said, “Ummm … we have some nice restaurants.” And she told me I’d picked a good spot for lunch.

Wonder #4 — speed table

I looked on the Internet and discovered that speed tables are used in place of speed bumps in places where it’s inconvenient to have traffic slow down. Huh?

Wonder #5 — Bangs Lake

I drove about a mile north to Cook Park, then walked down to the lake. The water was low, which left extensive mud flats along the shore. The trees on the shore were bare and the sky was gray. It wasn’t a marvelously beautiful sight, but I figured it was probably the best that Wauconda had to offer.

I grabbed the chair and my good camera and walked a quarter of a mile to a spot where several ducks were swimming close to shore. Before I could set up the chair, they took off, which was just as well because the battery to my camera was still in the car. I walked back and got it and decided on a different location — at the end of the Arthur G. Farley Accessible Fishing Pier. The previous pier was inaccessible, and the town council was unhappy with how infrequently it was used. (I just made that last bit up.)

Anyway, here’s my red chair shot.

I did the best I could. I got downtown Wauconda with the water tower in the distance, two guys in a boat out on the lake, Mallards on the right, American Coots on the left, an old wooden dock with American flags and in the right distance …

Wonder #6 — a beach that also appeared in The Blues Brothers movie.

The beach isn’t open to the public, but I looked over the fence and saw the slide that appears in the left background of the movie photo. It’s now up on shore amid the trees.

Wonder #7 — Slyce Coal Fired Pizza Company

I left Wauconda in the early afternoon, having exhausted its November sightseeing possibilities, but I came back again that night and brought my wife. There was one restaurant in town that had more and higher ratings than any other by far — Slyce Coal Fired Pizza Company. It didn’t look like a lot on the outside.

But the inside was pleasant.

As was the company.

We ordered the Fields of Blue salad, which had hearts of romaine, tomatoes, walnuts, blue cheese dressing, and Gorgonzola crumble. I’m not a fan of walnuts, but I do believe this was the best salad I’ve ever had.

There was enough for four people, but we manage to polish it off between us. I can’t remember another salad that I was sorry to see gone. Our pizza had meatballs, pepperoni, sausage, and prosciutto, and it was every bit as good as the salad.

We’ll be back.

My recommendation for a town slogan — “Ummm … we have some nice restaurants.”