The Bowen Arrows

July 8 & 9, 2009

We spent the first half of Wednesday packing up, cleaning up the apartment and washing all of the bedding. Mrs. Kay didn't ask us to but I wanted to show my gratitude by leaving things exactly like I found them and even cleaner, if possible.

We rolled out of Rapid City around 2:00 and headed east toward Huron, South Dakota where we would spend the night. On Thursday morning we drove the short distance from Huron to De Smet, which is where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family settled around 1880. When Gracie was four years old I began reading the beloved series of books written by Wilder and we finished the collection when she was six or seven. I read the series when I was a young girl so it was intriguing to me to see the places Laura rode her horse By The Shores of Silver Lake, walked the streets of De Smet in Little Town On The Prairie, fought the bitter cold, endless snow and starvation in The Long Winter, and married Almanzo in These Happy Golden Years. We took a guided tour of the Surveyor's House which is where the Ingalls family first lived when they came to the area, the first school that Laura and younger sister, Carrie attended, and a replica of the Brewster school where Laura first taught at age 15. After that we all got in our cars and our guide led us to the Ingalls home on Third Street that Pa built for he, Ma, Carrie and Grace after Laura married Almanzo. We drove out to the site where Almanzo and Laura first lived after they were married which was also the birthplace of only daughter, Rose. From there we drove out to the cemetery where the entire family is buried with the exception of Laura, Almanzo and Rose. Even the infant son of Almanzo and Laura is buried there outside of De Smet. Almanzo and Laura are buried in Mansfield, Missouri, The cemetery was something I hadn't thought of seeing and that was one of the highlights for me as it made the stories seem all the more real. Besides the graves of the Ingalls family, we saw the graves of the Boasts, the Fullers, the Browns, the Gilberts and the Loftus families, all names mentioned in her stories. When those people lived, died and were buried there, there was nary a tree to be found. As a matter of fact I read in one of the houses I visited that Carrie, when she was very small girl, asked Ma, "What is a tree?" It was endless prairie and Laura spoke fondly of it for the most part. But now the cemetery is nestled and protected in a haven of evergreens and giant oaks. There are trees scattered throughout the entire region leaving the sea of grasses a thing of the past.

Following lunch at the Oxbow Restaurant, we drove east out of town around the Big Slough to which Laura often referred, to the Ingalls Homestead site and Memorial. A replica of the house now sits yards away from the Cottonwod trees that Pa planted. The kids enjoyed stepping inside a dugout house like the one the Ingalls' lived in at Plum Creek, pumping water from the well, and washing clothes in a wringer washer, Hope tried her hands and feet at the sewing mahine and Landis made some music at the pump organ. Finally, we made our way to the stable where the kids took turns riding horseback and being pulled in a cart, They made corncob dolls, ropes and hay bundles (you gotta read The Long Winter to know why they would make hay bundles). The husband and wife duo, Paul and Joan, that guided us throuh our activities, were visitors themselves from Iowa just a few years ago. When they saw the place they fell in love with it and believing they could meet some needs, decided to move there. They now live on a farm across one road and a field from the Ingalls Homestead. Their Shetland Pony, Star, was a favorite for Faith, who loved petting her and telling her what to do but refused to ride her. But when Paul took the whole family on a covered wagon ride, he dismissed Star and told her to go home. A minute into our wagon ride and we could see Star's little blonde mane trotting across the field barely above the crops and nearing her barn. The kids were worried about Star running off but Paul assured them she knew how to get home. He was so good to us and even went off the usual route to drop us off at the parking lot in order for us to avoid pushing Grace's wheelchair up the grassy hill.

As we off toward Interstate 29 with the sun setting behind us I told Bobby that this family was no different than any of the others that originally came and settled this land. But the fact that a grown woman took the time to sit down and remember and then write everything down in order to tell others what pioneer life was like has made the Ingalls a family icon and a familiar part of our American history.

Our stopping point on Thursday night at 11:00 was Sisseton, South Dakota, home of the Lundstrom's.

The "Surveyor's House" where the Ingalls family first lived when they came to De Smet and some original chalk drawing found under the walls in the school where Laura and Carrie attended.