Carolyn Erickson

I was pleasantly surprised to see that freelance writer and Blogathon participant Sandra Hume maintains a blog about Laura Ingalls Wilder called Only Laura. (Read a recent post) Right before Spring Break, my daughter’s first grade class did a unit on Little House on the Prairie that captured my 7-year old’s attention - enough so that she asked for and got special permission to check the book out of the library.

 It’s a big book for a first-grader, but with some help, she read the whole thing.  Mrs. Wilder was a great writer! The book was so good I would sneak into my daughter’s room at night to retrieve it so my husband and I could read it together. (Heh. I read; he listened.) I grew up watching the series on television but had never read the book before.

At some point, I realized that prairie = Kansas (I know, I’m slow), and with the help of Google I discovered that the site of the Ingalls’ prairie homestead was just two hours away near the town of Independence, Kansas. I think I was more thrilled than she was.  We packed up for an overnight trip and, thanking God that we didn’t have to make the trip in a wagon, drove to the site.

The little house is a replica, but the site is the original location near Walnut Creek where the Ingalls made their home. Apparently they only lived there for about a year before discovering the land was reserved for the native Americans.

We took pictures, of course. And here they are:

The three buildings you see here are the replica of the little house and an authentic post office and school that they moved to the site.

Below is a hand dug well that apparently helped confirm this as the original site.

Here is the little house. “Little” is an apt description. There wasn’t much room inside! That’s Pa coming out of the house.

The inside of the little house. Notice the table, which is exactly as I pictured it from reading the book, with the exception of the red-checked tablecloth. (Did they have those back then?)

This is the school.

Here is the Wayside Post Office, and a picture of the prairie. The sign says: Look north and visualize covered wagons coming over the Kansas prairie. It isn’t hard to imagine it as Laura would have seen it.

It’s fun being a parent, because we can take trips like this under the guise of doing something educational with our kids. I have no doubt she’s going to have great memories (which will largely consist of splashing in the hotel pool and watching movies on the big flat-screen TV), but I think I treasured this experience more than she did. Ma must have been an amazing woman to put up with living life on a prairie.

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