Little Town on the Prairie

Our last major stop of our 250th Birthday Celebration of America tour was near and dear to Debbie's heart.  For as long as I've known her, Debbie has been a huge Laura Ingalls Wilder fan.  (We previously visited Laura's home in Mansfield, Missouri in 2008.)  Apparently Debbie always wanted to visit DeSmet, South Dakota, where four of the Little House books are set, but figured it was too out of the way for her to ever get here.  Of course, when you're already traveling as far as North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park, what's a few extra miles, right?  

We were nearing DeSmet in the late afternoon of Wednesday, June 3, when Debbie spied this historical marker.  We had to pull the CR-V off the highway so we could get a pic!

  

We next headed into the town of DeSmet itself (memorialized in the books as "The Little Town on the Prairie") and checked into our Bed and Breakfast for the night.  

Our B & B had an association with the books, having been built to be the home of a character named Banker Ruth - and it also happened to be just a couple doors away from the last home that Charles and Caroline Ingalls lived in!

We enjoyed a pizza supper at a restaurant called "Half Pint" and then roamed the town, looking at some of the historical buildings mentioned in the books.  

Since we hadn't driven enough, we got back in the car and drove to the outskirts of town to see the land that had been Charles' claim in the early 1880s.

We next drove out to the twin lakes a few miles outside of town which are described in the books.  There was a whopper of a lightning storm moving in, so I was able to prevail upon Debbie to return to our lodgings for the night.  Tomorrow would be a big day for her!

On Thursday, we woke early and packed up.  We enjoyed a very nice breakfast from our hosts at the bed and breakfast.  Then we headed over for the tour!

We have many more pictures, but here a couple of highlights.  I think Debbie's favorite was the Surveyor's House where Laura spent her first winter in DeSmet.  It had a dresser that Charles "Pa" Ingalls had made.

There was the original school in De Smet where Laura was a student.  They also had a re-creation of the Brewster School where she first taught.

The tour participants loaded up their vehicles and drove into town where we toured Charles and Caroline's last house (near our bed and breakfast.)  Here is our guide telling us what happened to all the family members after the books ended:

After the official tour was over, we drove out to the DeSmet cemetery and saw where several members of the Ingalls family are buried.  We stopped in town at a couple of gift stores to look for souvenirs and hear some stories about the town's connection to Laura.  Finally, we returned to the museum where the tour began and looked at the artifacts and exhibits there.  I think Debbie could have spent hours there!  

We were getting pretty hungry by this point, though, so we headed to the Oxbow Restaurant where we had a very nice lunch.  Debbie said that she had seen everything that she had wanted to, so we were now ready to hit the homestretch of our trip!