I think I might be about to set some new record for photos on one blog post.

(It’s not a record I care to take the time to actually validate, but I think I’m right anyway.)

On our westward journey each stop had its own treasures and surprises to discover.

You can’t exactly compare one location to another – but, you sort of can.

When we reached DeSmet, South Dakota and pulled up to The Ingalls Homestead out on the for reals prairie, we all felt like it was exactly as Laura described it in her last several novels.

 

 

The Ingalls Homestead is only a few miles from the downtown DeSmet area where we toured the surveyor’s house and fell in love with the big house Pa built Ma.

The Ingalls Homestead is on the same site where Pa and Ma purchased their claim shanty after their winter spent on the shores of Silver Lake.

My goodness guys.  As far as activities and living history and just plain old fun for the kids – this spot was the best.  We could have stayed and played for an extra day.  (Or two.)

This is where we slept in a covered wagon.

 

 

And you know what?  It was pretty comfy.  There were cushions to sleep on – which beats the ground we’d been sleeping on for so many nights prior to that.

There are only a few wagons and I think they get reserved pretty early in the season.  I called back in January or February or so to be certain we could have our turn in the wagon.  Honestly, I wish we could have stayed another night but it just didn’t work out, travel-wise.  You can also pitch your tent at the Ingalls Homestead, either right beside a covered wagon if you want to have more sleeping space, or elsewhere if you don’t have a wagon reserved.

We were probably a pretty tight fit in our wagon – and we had the large size.  There is a smaller one available as well.  But really it didn’t feel crowded at all to us.  Of course – our car was parked within walking distance and we didn’t bring very much into the wagon with us for just one evening.  We did have three kids sharing one double bed mattress- but they are small and enthusiastic and thought wagon-sleeping worth the close quarters.

The next morning Kevin and I got up early to watch the sunrise over the prairie.  I watched it rise near the wagon through sleepy eyes and quickly crawled back into the wagon to finish my rest.  Kevin, however, ran a few miles around the prairie and set the camera on a tripod and recorded the sunrise for a later video.  Yeah, it was stunningly beautiful.  And yeah, he’s more committed to cool videos and exercise than I am.

 

 

Before we walked over to explore the rest of the homestead (and that was what was so cool about the wagon and campsite locations – you were already on site) the kids went wild catching the hordes of frogs hopping everywhere.

 

 

The Homestead features a nearly-exact replica of the claim shanty Pa added on to over the years the family lived there.  (The replica was easy to duplicate as Laura recorded its exact dimensions and described its interior in full detail.)

 

 

The kids loved doing laundry outside and hanging the clothes to dry on the line with the wooden pins and the endless prairie wind.

Otto loved the barn where Black Susan was lounging around on hay bales and a newborn calf was resting peacefully and chickens were scratching in  the yard.

We filled our water bottles at Pa’s pump, springing up from the same water source Pa discovered and used for his own family.

 

 

There was also a barn with horses and horse rides and a tiny horse-drawn wagon that the kids could “drive” themselves.  And although there were plenty of other visitors, the homestead is wide open and spacious and the volunteers were gracious and the kids could ride the horses and drive the carts as many times as they wanted.

Which was a lot.

 

 

Piper was in horse heaven.  She rode every horse that was available – multiple times.

And we all kind of fell in love with Long John, a teensy tiny horse with one blue eye who was just a few months old.

 

 

This picture was just so cute that the South Dakota Department of Tourism reposted it on their Instagram page after Kevin posted it on his.

While Piper and Mosely obsessed over horse rides, Bergen and Kevin and Otto spent much of their time trying to lasso a life-size plastic calf.

 

 

Don’t you just love the wide open spaces all around?

I loved that.  Maybe because it is so different from home.  Everything just felt so open.  It even made me want to run.  Not like the exercising run where I sweat and get a blotchy red face.  I mean the kind of run where you sort of throw your arms open wide and toss your head back and pretend your hair is long and curly and you just run and smile and imagine you look as awesome as you feel.

That’s the kind of running that the prairie inspires.

At another barn demonstrations were set up for twisting rope

 

 

and grinding wheat berries and making corn cob dolls and learning how Pa and Laura spent the long winter twisting hay to keep the family warm and alive.

 

 

The staff were incredibly gracious and well-educated in all things Laura.  They were patient and kind to all of the guests – young and old – eager to touch and learn and experience the life of the Ingalls.

Goodness – in the claim shanty one of the guides and I struck up a conversation that brought us around to our mutual affection for our mommas and the fact that we both owned the same copies of the Little House books that they read to us.  Truly, the guides were a genuine bonus to the entire homestead.

I am sure I am forgetting some details – there was a church and a tall tower you could climb to get a giant overview and see the big slough where one of the Ingalls sisters was once lost and where Laura and Carrie first spotted Almanzo cutting hay.  There’s a dug out replica and a very handy display in one of the buildings neatly outlining where each book from the series is set.

Off in the distance stood a little white school house.  We got to ride a covered wagon out to  the school house – and the kids were able to take turns driving the big pair of horses pulling our wagon.

 

 

Waiting at the school house – which was an actual school house used by one of Laura’s former students and later donated to the historical site – was the school marm.  We donned bonnets and hats at the door and she instructed us to sit on the appropriate side – boys on the left, girls on the right.

She skillfully and entertainingly walked us through the history of that school house and of Laura’s one room school house education.  Piper was able to go to the front of the room for a demonstration and we learned that the bell that was rung after school was out was so the parents would know when to expect their children home from their long walks from the school house.

It was the kind of homestead where you just felt free to linger.

Where you wanted to return and hang out with the little horse or wander back to the barn to see what trouble the cat may have gotten itself into.  Where you wanted to stand in the lovely wildflower garden and feel the wind dance across your skin and listen to the linens whipping back and forth on the clothesline and pretend you live on a prairie too.

 

Oh – and I almost forgot.

My favorite thing.

The best part.

No, I’m not kidding.

Do you know what this is?

 

 

Do you have any idea what I am touching here?

(Yes!  Finally something I was allowed to touch!)

Sure.  Yes.  A tree.

Everybody wins!

It’s a tree.

 

 

It’s a Cottonwood tree, specifically.

Y’all.

It’s one of the Cottonwood trees that Pa planted right outside of his South Dakota claim shanty the first year he and his sweet, historical, pioneering family lived there.

It’s Pa’s Cottonwood.

I couldn’t get over it.

I can’t even really tell you why I loved those trees so much.

But I can tell you that I did.

I just kept running my hand across its unbelievably thick trunk and imagining Pa, hopeful and somber, serious and jolly, planting these trees and staking his claim and his future and his heart on this barren, windy, untamable prairie.

If I was a younger person, or a more agile adult, I would have responded to this tender landmark with the same exuberance my boy Hawkeye does in the next picture.

 

 

 

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