days 1 and 2: driving west, laura ingalls wilder home.

Hello from the open road!

I’m writing from the rolling prairie farmlands of Kansas, with the highway stretching straight in front of us as far as the eye can see under an enormous pale sky. We’re in wind turbine country, with the tall white towers rising all around us, and when I stepped outside the van at a rest area just now, the wind whipped my face and hair.

What would it be like to live in this wide, flat, windy land all of the time?

After a whirlwind weekend packing and cleaning and making last minute trips to Publix, we hit the road at 7:15 Monday morning. We had three days to get to Estes Park, Colorado, our first real stop, and about 1,750 miles of driving, so we needed to put in a long day on the road.

 

 

While I spent weeks shopping and reading road-trip-with-family blogs to figure out our van packing scheme, David was planning our entire itinerary, for which I’m very, very grateful. All I can say is that in order to pull off a trip of this proportion with four elementary-aged kids, it takes some serious team work. We both put in many hours of work before we ever left home. And only two and a half days in, it’s paying off.

I’m going to write a separate post at the end of our travels to talk about packing and prep work, with everything we learn along the way (we’ve already picked up some good tips!). But two immediate benefits we’ve seen: fitting and locating things in the van has been very smooth thus far, and we’ve loved having a detailed travel itinerary. For our three days of driving we packed lunches.

We knew we needed to drive to the Nashville area first thing Monday, because we wanted to make a quick stop at our friends’ new farm, Berryfield Acres.

David has long daydreamed of buying a piece of land with a house, livestock, and large garden, and so we jumped at the chance to see a family who has actually done it this past year. We ate snacks, let the kids run free for an hour, hold baby chicks, and meet the goats, while the grown ups got a house and garden tour. We were very impressed with the amount of work they’ve done to make their dream happen, and David got a good dose of reality of the staggering amount of work living on a farm entails (our conclusion: not for this season of life).

And then it was time to hit the road again!

David has a rough idea of how far we should get each night, then we look for a hotel with free breakfast. This enables us to only buy dinner out each day of driving. The first night we found a Holiday Inn in Poplar Bluff, Missouri at 8:30 pm, which felt like 9:30 to us because of the time change. We all fell fast asleep.

On Tuesday we woke up, used our free breakfast vouchers in the hotel restaurant, and decided from then on we’d be on the look-out for breakfast buffets instead. A sit-down restaurant is too time-consuming.

 

 

With no hot water to be found in our hotel, David set up his pocket rocket camping burner for our drip coffee. On the hotel sidewalk. It’s occurred to us that a electric kettle would’ve been a good idea, because at least we could make coffee in our hotel room!

And then, we journeyed west again.

 

 

 

 

 

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum, Mansfield, Missouri

 

 

 

We drove two hours to Mansfield to fulfill a long time dream of mine, to visit Laura and Almanzo Wilder’s home, Rocky Ridge Farm.

The above photos are of the museum with the check-in desk and a lovely, big bookstore (what could be more fun than a Little House book store!).

There are three main points to see on the property: the museum/bookstore, then along a curvy path up the hill is the white farmhouse, and finally, about half a mile up the road down at the end of a little lane is the Rock House. The price of admission includes the museum, and guided tours of both houses.

 

 

The museum was incredible. Laura lived from 1867-1957, and I was amazed that so many of hers and her family’s possessions are preserved. We saw Pa’s violin with it’s battered case where he kept cash, lovely flowered dishes belonging to Laura and her Ma, a quilt Mary made, correspondence between family members (including a delightful typed letter from little sister Grace, generously sprinkled with “gee!” and “golly!” and other clues to her personality), the trunk Laura, Almanzo, and their young daughter, Rose brought east from South Dakota to Missouri.

There was a 3/4’s size replica of the wagon that the Wilders drove to Missouri, and all 6 of us marveled that it is much smaller than we imagined.

I got a lump in my throat when I saw the original edition of Little House in the Big Woods in Braille. Mary, who became blind at age 14 due to illness, was able to read her sister’s novel!

 

 

I calculated that I’ve been reading the Little House series and various other books about it for 28 years now. Amie has read or listened to the whole series on audiobook by now, and all of us are listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek this first leg of our trip.

Setting foot on the lush rolling hills of Rocky Ridge Farm in the Ozarks felt surreal. Laura had such a keen eye for setting, that it was very similar to what I expected after growing up reading her essays in Little House in the Ozarks.

 

 

 

In the years after they got married, Laura and Almanzo struggled to make ends meet homesteading on the dusty prairies of South Dakota, and both became terribly ill with diphtheria, which left Almanzo lame in one leg. After hearing a description from a friend, decided to move to Mansfield, Missouri, “The Land of the Big Red Apple,” for a new start.

Do you know how they saved enough money for the move?

Laura worked for a seamstress 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. She earned a dollar a week. Almanzo earned money doing odd jobs in the town of De Smet. Rose, age 7, lived with Laura’s parents “and the aunts” in town, and went to school while her parents worked nearly around the clock.

When they’d saved one hundred dollars, they were able to pack up and move East.

 

 

 

The Wilders traveled the 670 miles by covered wagon (about a 10 hour car ride), and arrived in Mansfield on August 30, 1894, and were able to purchase the forty-acre farm. The house began as a log cabin, which Almanzo added onto, a room at a time, until it became this rambling farmhouse. Almanzo built a dairy farm and fruit orchards and added to the acreage over the years.

Our family loved wandering through the house with the warm, friendly docent, and a small group of tourists. We were the youngest by several decades!

I couldn’t believe I was standing in the light-filled kitchen where Laura cooked and washed dishes for years and years. We learned that Laura was less than 5 feet tall — shorter than Judah — and her counters were short to match. Laura called windows “living pictures” and made sure to have plenty throughout her kitchen and house so that she could see her lovely farm.

 

 

If you’ve read The First Four Years, you know that the first years of Laura and Almanzo’s married life were filled with heartache as they lost their infant son and a home to fire, and encountered drought, and then serious illness. I’d even forgotten that they even spent time living in with family in Minnesota and Florida during those years of trying desperately to make ends meet.

Knowing of their suffering makes Rocky Ridge Farm even more beautiful. I’m so thankful they were able to build a life and live out their days on this lovely patch of earth, but I don’t for a moment think that doing it was easy.

The house was nicer than I expected, with cheerful paint colors and a wall-papered kitchen, clever, built-in cabinets in nearly every room, and velvet-smooth plank floors. We saw Laura’s bed and writing desk, and chairs and end tables that the resourceful Almanzo built.

Two surprises in the house were the “music room” and the library. I loved learning that Laura felt that a formal dining room was impractical and turned it into a little music room with a piano and organ, and tall wood electrola for playing records. The living room was spacious, with wood wainscoting, and the library was a little nook off to one side, filled with books. This was Amie’s favorite part of the house.

 

 

 

 

 

Almanzo and Laura’s daughter, Rose, grew up at Rocky Ridge Farm, and had the opportunity of going to high school in Louisiana living with her aunt, Eliza Jane Wilder. Her parents were unable to afford to send her to college, so she was largely self-educated, marrying, and living in various places in the United States, including San Francisco.

Rose became a very successful freelance writer, and after her own winding and sometimes painful journey of giving birth to a stillborn son, a divorce, and living as a journalist overseas, eventually moved home to Rocky Ridge Farm in 1928 to to write and support her parents. Her income enabled them to modernize the farmhouse, and soon after built a “retirement house” for her parents on the property.

 

 

 

The “Rock House,” as it was called by the Wilders was an English style country cottage that Rose ordered out of a Sears & Roebuck catalog for $2,000!

Our family loved the charming little home with its French windows, light-filled rooms, and tiled bathroom.

Almanzo and Laura lived here for 8 years, and this is where Laura wrote the first four books of the Little House series, with lots of help from Rose. They moved back into the farmhouse during the Depression and rented out the Rock House to a family who would eventually buy Rocky Ridge Farm from them.  Laura wrote the remainder of her series in the white farmhouse.

Her books were an instant success and she was very active in her home and community until she died. We saw a sampling of fan mail, and the local Mansfield library, which was named for her during her lifetime.

Later in life, after her parents’ death Rose was able to buy back the two houses and grounds, and turn them into a historic home and museum. She lived an active, fascinating life, and traveled extensively until her death in 1968 at age 81.

 

 

We spent two lovely hours at the Wilder’s home.

I could’ve stayed all day listening to the museum docents talk about the Ingalls and Wilder family and all the history surrounding their lives. It never occurred to me that Laura lived through both World Wars. Did you know that Carrie was the only of Laura’s sisters who was able to visit Rocky Ridge Farm?

I pondered that of all four Ingalls girls, Rose was the only surviving descendant. Mary never married, and Carrie and Grace married but never had children, although Carrie had two step-children.

A woman touring the homes with us is a university professor and researcher who’s writing a book on some of the major historical events mentioned in the Little House series, including the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and the Osage Indians of Kansas. I was overwhelmed being in the presence of these fascinating people who know so much and could answer any question I had about the farm or Laura or Rose.

I love meeting a person who has a passion to learn about something and does everything they can to grow and stretch their understanding, even if they never make a dime from it.

I want that kind of life for myself and my children.

 

 

When I look around at the farm now and see the smooth, green, rolling meadows and pastures, the good fields of corn and wheat and oats, I can hardly bring back to my mind the rough, rocky, brushy, ugly place that we first called Rock Ridge Farm. The name then serves to remind us of the battles we have fought and won and gives us a touch of sentiment and added value to the place.

– Almanzo Wilder, The Missouri Journalist, July 22, 1911

 

 

After a quick lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, we piled into the van again.

Life on the road reminds me of plane travel in that it feels like you enter a time warp. The hours and the days run together and you look around your van and think, This is our home right now. This is all there is.

We’ve never driven this volume of miles at one time, and halfway into Day 3, we’re surprised by how happy we are.

I wasn’t certain how long it would take David and me to truly disconnect from life in Columbia and relax, and discovered that by the time we drove past Asheville I was completely at ease.

I attribute this to the prayers of many and the simple fact that all my chores are done. For better or for worse, there is not one more thing I can do to prepare for this trip. All of our responsibilities and cares are hundreds of miles away by now, and we are at peace.

 

 

 

We put in 7 more hours of driving yesterday, and checked into a Holiday Inn Express in Salina, Kansas, at 8:30pm. The kids were delighted to discover that the indoor pool was open until 11:00. They swam happily until 10pm and David ran on the treadmill in the fitness room and I worked on this blog post, after which we all crashed into bed.

 

 

[Sources for my info about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family are: On the Way Home, Pioneer Girl, brochures from the tours, and Wikipedia]