Calumet City, IL Outdoor Activities

The team sits silently, trigger fingers poised to unleash the simulated ammo in their laser-tag guns. Nearby, one of their teammates waits to be rescued. The team's leader creeps forward, checks the area, and gestures to the others. They locate their captured comrade, but something is amiss: the pilot's head is shaking. The air fills with flashes of light, and the battle is over.

Team Combat Live uses laser tag as a means to act out immersive tactical scenarios, foster team camaraderie, and covertly scan supermarket barcodes. In indoor and outdoor spaces, combatants run, crouch, and fire, using the same laser gear employed by SWAT teams and Special Forces. To further hone tactical skills, Team Combat Live sprinkles each battlefield with ammo boxes and medic locations. Their instructors, including a certified SWAT instructor, also host summer camps that teach tactical maneuvers.

In 1910, when apothecaries regularly doled out narcotics and opiates for issues such as headaches or nausea, Joseph Meyer was planting natural alternatives to the questionable contents of the brown bottles. Through research, careful tending of herbs and medicinal plants, and labor negotiations with garden-gnome unions, Meyer's small operation grew steadily. He acquired a tract of land on the Little Calumet River where he grew medicinal plants and cultivated flora. Eventually, the tract of land was finished with an English gabled building and given a name: Indiana Botanic Gardens, Inc.

More than a century after Meyer actualized his vision of providing natural health alternatives, his family continues to champion his idea. They curate an ever-expanding inventory that includes vitamins, nutritional supplements, and bulk herbals—all of which may be purchased both in-store and online.