South Dakota

We wrapped up our tour of South Dakota by visiting the world famous Corn Palace in Mitchell (what do you mean you haven’t heard of it??) They decorate the outside of the building with dyed corn on the cob. They change the murals every year in September (yes, they were working on it while we were there.) We then surprised the girls by taking a little detour through the town of De Smet. Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame) lived here in the 1880’s. We happen to be going through the Little House books now, so it was great timing! We showed up at the Ingalls Homestead just as the gift shop was closing, but we found out that they had four RV pads – so we stayed the night! The grounds were open for us to explore at our leisure. There are no original buildings but they have several recreations. We saw a replica of a little house the Ingalls may have lived in, a workshop with actual tools and machines, an outhouse (ewwww!), an old schoolhouse, a barn, and more. The girls got to wash rags with an old washboard (I tried talking them into doing all our laundry – but they just looked at me like I was crazy!), make a button toy, and their favorite, de-kernelling corn in a crank machine. Today we drove around the town of De Smet and saw a house Charles “Pa” Ingalls actually built, a schoolhouse where Laura Ingalls taught (it had only three desks!), and the cemetery where some of the Ingalls were buried. Soon we will be driving through the town of Walnut Grove, MN – another town Laura lived in and the name of the town they used in the television series.

We are now back on course towards the Mall of America. (I must really love my girls – I can barely handle the Galleria at home – now I’m taking them to one of the largest malls in the world – ugghh!)

Chris is making a quick stop from driving to let some live ladybugs fly off the windshield – he felt he was being cruel driving down the road while they try to fly off. But as soon as we started driving away, another one landed on the windshield – guess this one’s going to Minneapolis with us. The girls and Chris also started a new game. There were so many flat rabbits on a stretch of highway – they started calling out “dumb bunny” whenever they saw one. They even made up a song to go with the game – “Run, Dumb Bunny Run.” Talk about your great educational experiences!