Things to Do in Green Valley

Sarah Withers adores her hometown. To chronicle her forays into her beloved city's flourishing culinary scene, she started writing a blog. She soon set out to give her audiences a more hands-on experience, and now immerses them in Frederick's offerings with food and walking tours. Inspired by a tour she took in New York City, she recruited tour guides who can bring the burg's history to life and are familiar with the secret portals to 19th-century chocolate stashes. The experts guide visitors in storied jaunts through Frederick's center, where they sample painstakingly crafted cuisine and suds from the town's first brewpub while learning about its past and present.

At Adventure Park USA, visitors amble, shriek, and laugh through a sprawling 17.5 acres replete with Old West–themed rides and attractions such as the Wildcat roller coaster, which dips and curves around a track in order to elicit screams of joy akin to Steven Tyler on Christmas morning. Outdoor diversions such as bumper boats and go-karts stoke competitive fires, and a collection of little tykes rides invite pintsize riders to spin in teacups or gallop on carousel horseback. Open year-round, a 22,000-square-foot indoor playzone thumbs its nose at inclement weather with laser tag, an arcade, a ropes course, and a climbing wall. Owner Larry Stottlemeyer continues to expand this already extensive list of family-friendly diversions.

They’re a common food in several Latin countries, including Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, but empanadas are made a bit differently in Argentina. “We have an edge because we actually bake them,” Nicolás Ibarzabal, co-owner of 5411, told the Decider in 2009. ”Here in Chicago there are a couple of places that offer empanadas, but they’re pretty much all deep-fried. We like to think of ourselves as the new healthy frontier of empanadas.”

Along with pals and fellow Buenos Aires natives Mariano Lanfranconi and Andrés Arlia, Ibarzabal makes the flaky baked treats in nearly a dozen varieties. You’ll find traditional hand-cut beef empanadas as well as Americanized versions including barbecue chicken, which Ibarzabal admits is one of his favorites despite chuckles from his Argentine friends. The trio started 5411—a mash-up of Argentina’s country code, 54, and Buenos Aires’s city code, 11—in 2009 as a catering company before rolling out a food truck and finally opening a shop in Lakeview. That shop makes deliveries by the dozen, and the same pale-blue food truck—perhaps the catalyst for 5411’s success—still takes to the streets daily, urging office dwellers to emerge from their cubicles and horses to escape from their buggies.

Kids bounce off the walls of inflatable castles, cascade down air-filled slides, and squirm through plush obstacle courses at Pump It Up's indoor playground. Designed with safety in mind, this staff-supervised funhouse excites children's imaginations while they burn off extra energy at Pop-In Playtime.

Also designed as a party venue, the interactive party experiences involve interactive themes such as Pirate Quest and Superhero Training Camp, which challenges kids to decode secret messages as they listen to an adventuresome soundtrack. To fuel parties, parents can purchase pop, pizza, and cake, alongside balloons and goodie bags. Strengthening both imagination and body, Pump It Up also offers Jump-N-Art summer camps, where kids replicate Picasso's creative process of painting, then getting dizzy in an inflatable mansion.

Attracting more than 170,000 art enthusiasts to its events in 2011, the Sugarloaf Crafts Festival showcases original work from hundreds of artisans showcasing everything from handcrafted pottery, sculpture, and metalwork to jewelry, fashion, décor, and photography. Audiences can witness art being made live during educational demonstrations as artisans sculpt clay, whittle wood, forge metals, and imbue baskets with the power of speech. Hungry crafters can also sniff out specialty food items to sample or purchase while dancing across the sprawling venue to live music.

Sprawling across an indoor arena, Pump It Up's giant inflatables beckon kids to slide and bounce during private parties and open play. Technicolor bouncy castles send their inhabitants soaring, obstacle courses foster good-spirited competition, and ceiling-to-floor slides let sock-clad kiddies pretend they're escaping a giant gumball machine. Occasionally, Pump it Up's staff dims the lights and turns up the music to transform their facility into a glow-in-the-dark party catered to tweens and teens.

Pump It Up's staff supervises the arena during parties, giving parents time to relax and play patty-cake uninterrupted. They can also help customers design personalized parties inside a private room with options such as pizza, drinks, goodie bags, balloons, and ice cream.