Today we got to see South Dakota in the daylight again. The flatness that everyone talks about, due to the lack of mountains in the distance was not so noticeable to me, since I was doing the driving and more focused on my immediate surroundings.
We headed north off the interstate right after we crossed into Minnesota. This was a better chance to get a feel for the area and take a better look at the scenery. It was clear that the main enterprise was agriculture; there were fields everywhere we looked, primarily corn and soybeans. We had to slow down unexpectedly and pass a few tractors moving between fields or hauling giant cylindrical hay bales. We also found that Holland is filled with windmills. Who could have guessed that? I found it to be very fitting, anyway. They were not the traditional Dutch levee pumpers, either, but the gargantuan tri-blades I described earlier in our travels.
Walnut Grove, when we arrived, was a small little town of less than 400 population. We had lunch at Nellie’s Café, which had excellent food even though Delia was extremely and vocally disappointed that the building was not painted yellow. It just wasn’t right, in her mind. See was also distraught that Dean Butler, who played Almonzo Wilder in the NBC Little House series, would be in town this coming Saturday, and Allison Arngrim, who had the role of Nellie, would be there the week after, but we wouldn’t be able to stay that long. Not the first nor last time on this trip that we would not see something we would have liked to had we unlimited time.
We did wander through the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, and I learned many things I hadn’t known before. For instance, there was a minimized pedigree chart shoeing how Laura was related to the royal house of England. Most surprising was that I saw a common ancestor, William de Warenne, on her line, so I guess I am related to her as well. I knew that Laura’s daughter was also a well-known writer, but I did not know that she was their only child.
After the museum, we drove out of town to see what was left of the dugout home on the banks of Plum Creek. What was left amounted to a discernible indentation a few yards from the water. While there, Pam noticed some plantin growing there, which we used to remove the itchiness from yesterday’s mosquito bites. It works wonders! Mica had it the worst, of course. She’s such a sweet girl that the bugs just can’t leave her alone, whereas I am such a sourpuss that I didn’t get a single poke.
I believe I can live with that.
After that, we hit the road again, plotting our course through Sleepy Eye, just so we could say we’ve been there. As it was in Laura’s day, Sleepy Eye is a bigger town than Walnut Grove, but not exciting enough that we thought it would be worth going to Mankato as well. Instead we headed south and a little east to get to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, our stopping point for the night. We took longer than planned in Walnut Grove by a little bit, and we started late, of course, after not getting to bed last night until nearly 2:00. Tonight we are all turning in by midnight, so hopefully we will get back on track after this.
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