Miles Driven on June 18: 596
Lodging for June 18: Badlands Inn, Interior, SD (605) 433-4501
I left Lynette's early this morning (8:30 am) and drove south on highway 169 to Mankato. I only made it to the city limits though; it looked boring and I wanted to check out New Ulm, a German town. It was too early to go to the Schell Brewery (it opens at noon and I was there at 10:30), but I got to see the outside of the Haus Schell and garden, the barrel cellar, and the museum. Plus I saw two peacocks--I was really suprised to see them outside of a zoo like that. I was also surprised to see so much German writing; even the McDonald's enter sign said "Wilkommen".
From New Ulm I took U.S. 14, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historical Highway, to Walnut Grove, MN. It was exciting going through towns like Sleepy Eye that I remembered from the "Little House on the Prairie" books and TV show. I also got a strong sense of the agrarian nature of that part of Minnesota. It wasn't just farms here and there like in other states I'd passed through, there were many co-ops, industrial farming centers with their own freight cars ready to carry food to the rest of America.
Walnut Grove, I must say, was a disappointment. The "museum" had a timeline of the family's life and travels which was helpful, and one or two true artifiacts like a sewing kit. The rest of the exhibits seemed to focus on the cast of the TV show or local lore like old pictures of the high school.
I went to the area of the Ingalls Homestead in Walnut Grove. Plum Creek was there but the sod house is gone; only a marker and an indentation in the hillside remains. Still, I could feel the pioneer spirit and sense the openness of the land as I looked out on the horizon.
From Walnut Grove I went to DeSmet, SD. I think DeSmet had the best Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum I saw on this trip. I saw the surveyor's house that the family stayed in during their first winter in South Dakota. A tour guide explained the history of the use of the house, including what was authentic and what was a reproduction. Then I walked through the town to the house where Ma and Pa (and later Ma and Mary) lived in after Laura got married. The house was restored to the turn of the century and had real artifacts plus things of Rose Wilder's (my new hero--traveler, writer, and independent), translations of Little House books into other languages, and photos. A woman from Michigan said, however, that the big collection is in Mansfield, MO, between Denver and St. Louis. Maybe I should stop on the way back...I also stopped at the Ingalls Homestead site (by the shores of Silver Lake which is no longer a lake). That was similar to Walnut Grove, but a little more interesting. I also stopped at the Wilder Homestead, but that's just a historical marker on a rolling hill.
Finally, it was time to press on. No time to see the family grave. I barreled down highway 14 to Pierre (pronounced Peer according to the woman at the Mall of America), passing through towns with populations of 50 to 600. Pierre was a big city in contrast. Cute capitol building. Saw the Missouri River and plaques about Lewis and Clark. Drove through the Federal grassland area, not much different from the non-Federal areas I'd already driven through.
Finally got on I-90 to the Badlands, where I got a lesson in not showing up in a town after 9 p.m. First of all, the Badlands look REALLY freaky at night. The entrance to the park was devoid of employees. My cell phone didn't work in the area. There were no lights around the visitor center I managed to find. In fact, it was so dark I had to dig around in my car for a flashlight so I could see the numbers I was dialling on the pay phone. After all that effort, I got a recording saying that hotel which I had just called 12 hours earlier was not receiving calls. I checked my map again, concluded that I couldn't have missed the turn I needed, and cautiously kept going. I made it to the hotel where there was a note on the office door with my last name and instructions to proceed to Room 2, where the keys was hanging in the door. The owner came out a few minutes later and explained that he turns the phone off at 10:30. This was when I knew I wasn't in Philly any more, where more things are open 24 hours and a key like that would have been gone in 2 seconds. I wasn't sure if my experience was a good thing or a bad thing, it just was what it was and I felt a little bad about making the guy stay up late and worry over it.
Back to Road Trip Part One Page