Our journey to Minnesota, day 4: Laura Ingalls Wilder

We sadly left Minnesota and started our drive back to Wyoming.  We took a longer way home so we could stop by all the Little House on the Prairie sites, we LOVE Laura Ingalls Wilder in our family.  We hit Walnut Grove, Minnesota where she was as a child and where she met the girl who inspired Nellie Oleson. Her last name was actually Owen's, not Oleson. Then we went a few hours further down the road to De Smet, South Dakota. Here she spent a good chunk of her school years and met Almonzo.  We finally finished the day in the state Capitol, Pierre.

This town is about 35 miles from Walnut Grove and is mentioned a lot in the TV series.

Love that they have Nellie's Cafe! 

Eric makes a good Mary! Peter was taking the picture.

Original Walnut Grove jail.

An example of the sod house the Ingalls lived in.

The facade of the Ingall's home from the tv series. 

This is in De Smet, the original schoolhouse Mary and Laura attended.

The school house was made into a residence and when the walls were stripped down they found the original blackboards with chalk drawings on them.

Home the Ingall's stayed in when they first moved to De Smet.

The girls' bedroom. 

Caroline and Mary (before she went blind) would have played this organ which was in the church Charles helped build. 

One of the buildings had clothes you could dress up in. I left to find the bathroom and found this when I came back!

In a replica of a school room in Walnut Grove Eric pretended to be Miss Beadle and Brian is Willie, always in the corner.

This is the homestead of the Ingalls in De Smet. The church in the far distance is original, all the other buildings are replicas.

When we got to De Smet among the trees we heard this amazing sound. It was so loud.  It's hundreds of cicadas.