Road Trip to the Great Lakes-Headed Home

We left Duluth in the morning, and started making our way back home, we stopped in Sauk Centre to have lunch with one of Doug's cousins, and continued our journey south to Walnut Grove (The town made famous by Little House on the Prairie) While not much of the real Laura Ingalls story takes place in Walnut Grove, they did have a museum and a couple historical sites from the times the family was there. We camped the first night above the banks of Plum Creek, which due to torential amounts of rain over the last day or two was severely flooded and the ground was saturated.

Doug and the kids in a Little House era covered wagon outside the museum in Walnut Grove

After a restless night in the howling wind, we made our way West, following the Laura Ingalls Highway to the town of DeSmet, SD, which is where the Ingalls lived for most of their lives, if I had more time we would have toured more things, but we went to the Ingalls homestead and spent a couple hours learning about the pioneer way of life. The kids enjoyed making corn cob babies, grinding corn and weaving twine to make ropes in the old barn. The photo above is the homestead as viewed from a observation tower.

The kids and I on top of the tower overlooking the homestead


Rachel practicing her cooking skills in the 8 X 10 shack that is a replica of what the Ingalls lived in before they built their house

A replica of the Ingalls house, from Charles' drawings of the floor plan, which was built in 3 phases. To the left of this photo are 5 Cottonwood trees that Charles planted for each of his children over 120 years ago.

An Ingalls period church that was recently moved onto the homestead

The inside of the church

Caroline Ingalls gravesite, among several others from the family in DeSmet

After leaving DeSmet, we continued West to Lake Oahe, just North of Pierre, SD to camp for the night, we had a beautiful sunset and a wonderful last night of our vacation.