Journey in June: A Little House Tour

We are currently driving across South Dakota. It’s 90+ degrees outside and there is not a whole lot to see! We just put gas in the car at Ghost Town Gasoline (that is really what it was called). The pump was reminiscent of the ones our parents used to fill up our cars when we were children!

Today we completed our time learning about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Our first night we stayed at a lovely little campground in Walnut Grove called Plum Creek Park. We enjoyed meeting a mom and 12 year old daughter who are staying at the campground (in a tent!) for six weeks while they practice and perform in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant in July. We toured the museum in town and also drove out to the site of the Ingalls dugout on the banks of Plum Creek. We promised our girls ahead of time that they could dip their toes in the creek and when we got there the creek was very high and the banks were very muddy. We let them do it anyway though as we knew it would be a great disappointed to come all that way only to skip it.

From Walnut Grove we drove to the Ingalls Homestead Museum in De Smet, South Dakota. We camped right on sight with three other RVers (the tent area was in another location) and enjoyed S’Mores with our neighbors and their grandson. The best part of camping here were the stars! Out on the prairie we had an unobstructed view in all directions and there were no city lights to filter out the stars. In the morning we toured the various buildings, many of them having hands on activities for the children from the time period. There was a dugout we could go in and kitties to play with in the barn. The girls tried their hand at washing clothes and made simple toys. We rode a horse drawn wagon (the girls each had a turn driving) out to a schoolhouse where we learned what school was like for Laura and her sisters. Although the buildings were not the original buildings that Pa built, this was the location that the Ingalls lived in the book On the Shores of Silver Lake.

It’s hard to believe that our trip is coming to an end. We are staying three nights in the Black Hills area in South Dakota and then it’s time to head home. In some ways it feels like such a long time ago that we headed out to Salt Lake, yet at the same time it has gone by very quickly! What an amazing trip it has been so far. We’ve had some wonderful times that won’t soon be forgotten.