Long Drive on the Prairie

Tuesday was a long, long driving day. I’ve tried to limit our daily trek to four hours, with a couple hours driving, then a hike or a sight, and then another two hours, with, possibly, another sight or activity. We drove 266 miles on state highways, to De Smet, South Dakota, before we stopped for lunch at 2:30 PM. That’s 5 hours on our first leg, with another hour and a half to get to our hotel in Sioux Falls.

“So”, I’m sure you’re asking, “why didn’t you take Interstate 90? You could have driven from Wall to Sioux Falls in four hours. What’s so special about De Smet, South Dakota?” Well, I’m glad you asked. When Laura Ingalls was 13 years old, her father, Charles, left Plum Creek and the town of Walnut Grove and moved to the Dakota Territory to work for the railroad and earn some money.

Later that year, Laura and the rest of the family took their first train ride to join him, and spent a very cold winter living in a surveyor’s house on the shores of Silver Lake. When spring came, Charles built the first permanent building in the brand new town of De Smet. That marked the end of their nomadic, covered-wagon days. Laura describes this time in the two books By the Shores of Silver Lake, and The Long Winter. This is the actual school house where Laura and Carrie went to school. The building was moved onto the grounds of the museum, along with the surveyor’s house.

When Laura was fifteen, she managed to earn a teaching certificate, and got her first job teaching in the remote Brewster settlement. This is a recreation of the one-room school that she taught at for $20 a month.   

Inside, there are crude desks and a pot-bellied stove. According to the information panels, the walls were not insulated, nor were the cracks chinked, daubed, nor caulked. Laura describes this time in her book Little Town on the Prairie. 

Before we left for Sioux Falls, we went to the cemetery where the Ingalls family is buried. The pillar that Kathy is pointing at is Charles’ grave, while the plaque on her right is where Caroline (“Ma”) Ingalls is buried. Most of the rest of the family, as well as Laura and Almanzo’s infant child are buried here as well. 

Laura herself, her husband Almanzo, and her daughter Rose are buried in Mansfield, Missouri, which we aren’t going to visit. We are going to stop by Walnut Creek, Minnesota Wednesday, while listening to Laura’s book, On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Plum Creek, Trader Joe’s & Red Wing

Wednesday was another long driving day. After breakfast at the hotel, we set out for Walnut Grove, in a dense, dense fog. Our car kept saying “Eye sight disabled. Cameras don’t work.” We prayed about it and, after about an hour we drove out of the fog, listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek on the car speakers.

Immediately after we crossed the bridge over Plum Creek, we stopped to take a picture with the “Welcome to Walnut Grove” sign. Then we went to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum, and picked up a map of Walnut Creek as it was in 1870. Then we got back in the car and headed to our next stop, Rochester, on the other side of Minnesota. “What’s in Rochester?” you ask? Trader Joe’s, of course. Here’s Kathy standing beside the key to the Minnesota Trader Joe’s shopping bag.

After Trader Joe’s we drove to our overnight destination, Red Wing, Minnesota. After settling into our hotel room, we left to see the sights. Our first stop was the Red Wing Pottery Museum.

My grandfather on my mother’s side, Elroy Smith, was a potter in Sebring, Ohio. When the depression hit, he was let go. Along with the rest of his extended family, he moved out to Los Angeles in 1934, following a cousin who had gotten a job at one of the movie studios. Red Wing was a center for all kinds of pottery, including sewer pipes. Kathy especially liked these giant pottery vats, used for things like making pickles.

After the pottery museum, we headed downtown to the Red Wing shoe store, where we got our picture taken with the largest work shoe ever made. 

Just to be clear, this is not a “replica”. It was made just like one of their regular shoes, only larger. While we were there I tried to buy a pair of trainers to replace my Brooks running shoes with a hole in the toe. They were out of stock. Our last errand before turning in was to find some gelato. (We ate a late lunch in Rochester.) It turns out that Minnesota and Wisconsin (across the river) is not really gelato country. However, they do make good ice cream. We bought a scoop of pumpkin and a scoop of baked apple pie, and walked two blocks down town the Mississippi River to eat it.

Tomorrow we’ll be crossing the river to Wisconsin, where we’ll follow the Great River Road down the Mississippi to Iowa.