Many residents throughout Homewood and Flossmoor create festive light displays during the holiday season, but it can be a challenge for those who want to enjoy them to know where the best ones are.
Event managers in Homewood, Flossmoor and the H-F Park District collaborated this year on what was designed to be a solution to that problem — a trolley ride through both villages to visit the sparkliest homes and neighborhoods.
The tour included a list of 29 self-nominated homes, although the trolleys didn’t make it to all the addresses on the list. Two tours were scheduled with two trolleys. Time constraints meant a couple of detours were required to stay on time for the second run, but the detours resulted in several unlisted sights for tour guests, including a trip through brightly-lit downtown Flossmoor.
Organizers Stephanie Wright, Flossmoor event manager, and Marla Youngblood, Homewood event manager, served as tour guides, narrating the tour and reading descriptions provided by homeowners that told the story of individual displays.
The addresses and descriptions were provided to tour guests that night and were later posted on the Homewood village website so anyone in the community can take a self-guided tour of local holiday splendor.
Wright and Youngblood hope to make the tour a new holiday tradition in H-F. They were encouraged by the response to this first tour, noting that all the 120 available seats were claimed within about a day of the tour announcement.
Guests on the first trolley run seemed happy with the tour.
Danielle Ragland said she and her son, Campbell, enjoyed the ride.
“We really liked the Wonka house,” she said. “That was a hit.”
She referred to the home of Andy and Lilly Weberg at 2327 Hutchison Road. The family has for several years created an elaborate hand-made display featuring scenes and characters from the 1971 film, “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” starring the late Gene Wilder.
“It was cool to get into the different neighborhoods all around town to see what everybody is doing,” Ragland said.
To help combat the cold, D’s Cookie Dough owners D.K. and Staci Stout had a table set up at the trolley stop in the park district’s Goldberg Administration Center parking lot offering warm cookies and hot chocolate.
