The Boardwalk Everyone in Lake County Assumes Is Closed

Ask anyone in Grayslake or Mundelein what fall looks like around here and they'll give you the same three answers: Long Grove for apples, Didier Farms for pumpkins, maybe Six Flags if the kids are old enough for the scream. Fair enough. Those are real, and they're worth your Saturday. But there's a fourth stop that most longtime residents have quietly written off, and they're wrong to have done it.

Volo Bog State Natural Area sits off Brandenburg Road near Ingleside, and for years the story going around was that its famous floating boardwalk, the half-mile walkway that lets you stand in the middle of Illinois' only open-water quaking bog, was closed for good while the state figured out how to pay for its eighth full rebuild. Recent visitor reviews on Yelp and Tripadvisor still say as much. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources tells a different story on its own site: the boardwalk has received temporary repairs allowing completion of the loop, even as the agency works on a permanent fix. Two sources, same bog, different answers. If you've been driving past Volo Bog assuming there's nothing to see, you've been operating on outdated information, and you're about to miss the one week a year when this place looks like nowhere else in the county.

The Weekend Everyone Books First

Long Grove's Apple Fest returns September 25 through 27, its latest edition in a run that's stretched past three decades in the village's historic downtown. It's the event locals plan around: apple pies, cider donuts, apple wine and sangria, live music on a stage that's part of the festival every year, and enough foot traffic on the village's cobblestone walks to slow things to a crawl for three days straight.

What doesn't get mentioned as often is that Lake Zurich runs its own apple event most falls, and it's a different kind of day out entirely. Phase Three Brewing's Bushel of Apples Fall Fest sets up at Paulus Park with food, live music and fall activities for kids, and a portion of proceeds has gone to GiGi's Playhouse Deerfield, the nonprofit that runs educational and therapeutic programs for people with Down syndrome. The brewery has shifted its exact weekend from year to year, so check its calendar before you build a plan around a specific date, but the split holds regardless of when it lands: Long Grove is the family stroll with a stroller. Lake Zurich is the one with a beer garden and a cause attached to it.

Six Weekends, Mapped

Here's the part that actually helps if you're trying to plan around work, kids' soccer, or just not wanting to fight traffic on the same Saturday as everyone else:

Notice the pattern. Nothing in Lake County actually competes with itself for long. The county spreads its fall out across four or five towns instead of stacking everything into one weekend, which is either good planning by the tourism calendar or pure coincidence. Either way, it means you rarely have to choose between two things you actually want to do.

Didier Farms Runs Longer Than People Think

The other misconception worth correcting: people treat Didier Farms' Happy Times Pumpkin Fest in Lincolnshire like a two-weekend event you either catch or miss. It's not. The 2026 run stretches from September 16 through October 31, open most days of the week (the farm has kept Tuesdays as its closed day in past seasons), which means there's no real rush. Corn maze, pony and camel rides, an Animal Land Zoo, wagon rides through the farm's back acreage. General admission has historically been free, with attractions priced separately, so a Tuesday-off, low-crowd visit costs you almost nothing beyond a few tickets for the maze.

If your image of Didier Farms is still "that place we went once when the kids were little and it was packed," the six-week window is the update. Go on a Wednesday morning in early October. You'll have the corn maze mostly to yourself.

The Third Saturday Habit

Waukegan's ArtWauk doesn't get the same billing as the orchard festivals, maybe because it's not seasonal in the same way. It happens every third Saturday of the month, year-round, free, and it's built around downtown Waukegan's Arts and Entertainment District rather than a single farm or park. The Genesee Theatre, originally opened in 1927 and still the anchor of the district, sits a few blocks from Kapheim Studio, a regular ArtWauk stop built around a working weaving workshop and glassblowing studio, and from the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie, housed in the city's old Carnegie Library building.

What makes the fall run worth noting is that ArtWauk themes its nights differently once the weather turns. September's edition centers on Ballet Folklorico Tayahua's Fiesta sin Frontera. October flips the mood entirely with ZombieWauk. Same free monthly habit, different costume required.

What the Boardwalk Contradiction Actually Means

Back to Volo Bog, because this is the detail that changes how you spend one specific week this fall.

The bog itself was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1972, the southernmost open-water quaking bog in North America to show every stage of bog succession in one place. The half-mile boardwalk is the only way to walk out into the actual center of it, what the site calls the Eye of the bog, where floating mats of sphagnum moss and tamarack trees drift over water that's been forming since the last glacier receded. The DNR's own language on its repairs is direct: plans to replace the aging boardwalk are in the works, but temporary fixes have already restored the full loop.

That's the key fact locals are missing. It's not closed. It's patched, and walkable, while a permanent rebuild gets funded. If you've been avoiding it because of secondhand reports of closure, you've been skipping a half-mile loop that's currently open, plus another 5.5 miles of hiking trails around it that were never affected at all.

Here's why the timing matters this month specifically. Recent coverage of the site notes that the tamarack trees inside the bog turn a distinct gold shade in the days around Halloween, a narrow window that regular visitors circle on their calendars every year. Miss late October and you're looking at the same bog in its ordinary green or bare winter state. Guided one-hour tours run most Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., and the visitor center, built inside a converted early-1900s dairy barn, opens Wednesday through Sunday.

What This Means If You Already Live Here

None of this requires a car trip out of the county. Long Grove, Lincolnshire, Lake Zurich, Waukegan and Ingleside are all inside Lake County's own borders, most of them a twenty-minute drive from each other. The practical version of this post is a short list:

• Block September 19 for Didier Farms' opening weekend and ArtWauk's Fiesta sin Fronteras the same Saturday, different towns, same day.
• Book September 25-27 for Long Grove if you want the crowd and a walk past the village's one-lane covered bridge, the wooden-clad 1906 truss over Buffalo Creek that's been the town's icon since the covering went on in 1972. Watch for Lake Zurich's Bushel of Apples later in the season if you'd rather support GiGi's Playhouse Deerfield at Paulus Park instead.
• Go to Didier Farms on a weekday in early October instead of a weekend. It's open through Halloween and you're not the only one who figured that out for the weekends.
• Put Volo Bog on the calendar for the last two weekends of October specifically, when the tamaracks turn. Check the DNR site before you go, not a review from a year or two back, since the boardwalk status has genuinely changed since some of those reviews were written.
• Circle October 17 for ZombieWauk if the county's other fall events feel a little too wholesome for your taste that particular Saturday.

Fall in Lake County isn't actually crowded onto one weekend the way it can feel from a distance. It's spread across five towns and six weeks, with at least one spot most people have crossed off their list for a reason that stopped being true a while ago.

If you're the type who tracks this kind of detail about your own neighborhood, you're exactly the kind of client the Renee O'Brien Group likes working with when the time comes to buy, sell or just ask what a place like this is actually worth. Until then, go check on that boardwalk yourself.