Gareth was told when we got married that he had two people to aspire to: John at the Vale and Charles Ingalls (Or at least Michael Landon's TV version).
Some of you will have read the title to this post and immediately remembered the books or more likely started humming the theme tune and picturing the 3 children running down the meadow. For those of you that did not you could: a) skip the rest of this post b) persevere and maybe do some wiki-ing later.
Laura Ingalls Wilder is a very well known figure in US culture. She is the "pioneer girl". She was born in 1867 and died in 1957. In the 1930's she started publishing a series of children's books about her childhood as a settler. A long running TV series was made out of the books and most American children study her life in school at some point. The TV series is set in a town called Walnut Grove where Laura did live for a while, but the place where she spent a significant portion of her childhood and where her family remained was De Smet in South Dakota.
So I had decided that having read all the books and avidly watched the TV series, we too should traipse to De Smet. It wasn't very much out our way. We just needed to go a bit north first. Well about an hour and a bit north. Hundred miles or so.
We arrived in De Smet in time for us to be able to go on the penultimate tour of the day. So I went on the tour as we were on a budget and G thought he could have more fun for 90 minutes thoroughly not on the tour. I made sure he didn't miss out anyway as I told him all about it during the remaining 382 miles of the drive to that night's hotel.
This is the house that the Ingalls lived in when they first arrived in De Smet, which was a surveyors house they looked after for the winter until their homestead was settled. (no internal pictures were allowed)
One of the worst winters occurred whilst they lived there and the tour talked about blizzards that lasted for 3+days at a time. This stopped the train and other supplies being able to get to the town, so the townspeople ended up making these knotty things out of grass in order to use as fuel to burn to warm their homes and cook etc. Apparently boiling a kettle would take at least 10 or so of them.
This was the school house which Laura actually was taught in. The desks are from the time period as well and original blackboards and other items.
When Laura was 15 years old she obtained her teaching certificate and lived away from home for the first time, teaching at a small school. Laura did not, however, ever graduate high school as she got married to a local farmer when she was 18 years old. As married women were not able to be teachers either she basically worked with him on the farm until she wrote her books when she was in her sixties.
Ma and Pa Ingalls remained in De Smet and lived in this house, which Pa Ingalls built. Mary Ingalls (Laura's older sister) also lived here with them as she had gone blind in childhood. (Again couldn't take pictures inside) Laura eventually moved to Missouri with her husband and her family home there is also a museum.
However, Pa Ingalls had itchy feet and a sense of adventure, for which I can sympathise, but he did drag his family around the country thousands of miles in covered wagons for days and weeks at a time. The experience in places wasn't a picnic either: he persuaded his wife to move to Walnut Grove on the understanding that there was land and a house waiting for them. However when they arrived, the house was actually a dugout. I would be incandescent. On another occasion the harvest was wiped out by locusts two years in a row and Charles ended up walking over 150 miles for work to pay all his bills.
Like my other post, this history is very different to Britain of the time, although many people were tempted by the American dream (or were forced to) and made a new life as pioneers. It was only about 150 years ago, so still close enough in history for people to remember their older family members telling them about the experience. It was really interesting to actually see the things I had read about in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, however. The tour guides imparted the sense of adventure and new frontiers of those times, which was even more interesting. One thing about the tour was that it was at two separate locations, so you had to drive between the two while following the tour guide. I did think that a UK tour wouldn't assume that you would have access to the car. The result was that poor Gareth had to wait outside for 90 minutes so that he could chauffeur me over to the second location instead of sitting in the coffee shop in town. Bless his cotton socks.
We then headed out to Walnut Grove, which was not nearly as exciting as De Smet. The dug out home collapsed years ago so the land is just kept as prairie. We arrived early evening and just had a drive and walk around the town. My fellow tourer in De Smet had proclaimed that she hated Michael Landon because he couldn't be bothered to grow a beard for his role and basically suggested that there were fans of the TV shows, but only the book fans were true fans. I completely disagree with her; I rather felt that Walnut Grove only existed because the TV show was set there and wasn't really worth the trip (luckily this wasn't a detour).
We arrived at our hotel in Trempeleau after midnight (sorry again G). This was a little town on the Mississippi with a railroad running through it.
Our hotel
View from our balcony
My education is incomplete - I read the story but didn't see the show. I wonder if Netflix will have it...
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