Nebraska is my nemesis!

The question is: will Mr Ruby and I ever learn? On our first trip to Pepin, we decided to detour on the way back, just so we could drive through a little corner of Iowa and say we'd been there. It was dark, freezing cold, and the Mouse, who was only 17 months old at the time, got so bored she tried to drown herself. I'd given her a bottle of water to drink and she managed to unscrew the cap and tip it all over herself. Changing a toddler in the back of the car, in the dark, in sub-zero temperatures, is not the easiest thing to do.

So, what did we decide to do this time? Detour a little and just take the corner of Nebraska, 'just so we could say we'd been there.' You'll be pleased to know that while the Mouse did not try to drown herself, the Missouri River gave it it's best shot. The river had burst it's banks and whole fields were submerged. It looks very strange to see trees, telegraph poles and those crop-watering machines just poking out of the river. Unfortunately, the bridge we were going to cross, which was about five miles from our Iowa camp site, was closed and we had to detour to the next bridge which was 60 miles away! Oh well, at least we saw a lot of Nebraksa: good if you like cornfields and diversions.

Still, we appreciated our camp site even more, by the time we finally arrrived. Our pitch was right by the lake, where we lit another campfire and made yet more s'mores. The Mouse, TR and I played baseball, only with slightly rounders-like made up rules. (We have no idea how you play baseball. I just hope no one was watching.)

Mr Ruby and TR light the fire.

We packed everything into the RV...

The next morning we packed up early, ready for our big drive: right the way across the width of Iowa. Now Iowa, if you were wondering, is mainly cornfields. Miles and miles and miles of corn. So much of it that you wonder how much a nation can consume. I had imagined that it would be all flat too, but since we were driving, at least to start with, through the Missouri valley, it's actually quite hilly. I'd also imagined that TR, the Mouse and I could while away the hours by playing games and undertaking various craft projects. Well, we managed 'Campervan Baseball,' which is less destructive than it sounds. I blew soap bubbles, while the children tried to bat them with teaspoons. Nuts, I know, but kind of inventive, don't you think? After that though, we pretty much had to abandon everything. The cross winds on I-90 (the Interstate) were so strong that you couldn't really do anything much. TR was very nearly sick again, but we managed to persuade him to go to sleep and he woke up feeling much better. I'm telling you, that was a long eight hours! Still, it felt good to back in Illinois and to take a cooling dip in the pool. I confess this is the only way the Mouse and TR have got clean while on our trip: showering them in the RV is far too complicated and they only get dirty again. Dirt is good!


This was the last night of our trip. By now we'd run out of chocolate and graham crackers (they pronounce that 'gram' here), so we just toasted marshmallows and got eaten alive by giant midges.

Our 'wagon'.

The Mouse and TR shared their bunk.

An early breakfast. Note the insect repellent!

If the Gramps is reading, the little yellow duck is 'Ducky 6', bought with the holiday money you gave to TR. He has some left and is saving it, he assures us, to buy 'Ducky 7' in Chicago.

Little Town on the Prairie

I just realised, some of you may need a little crash-course in Laura-ology. You regret reading this now, don't you? OK, so if you've only ever seen the TV series, well... that'll do for now. The TV series was set in Walnut Grove, Minnesota (where we paddled), but filmed in California. It made out that Laura's family spent almost all of their time in Walnute Grove, whereas really they moved around... a lot. I'll spare you the full version, but they started out in Pepin, Wisconsin (where we saw the log cabin), moved to Kansas, back to Pepin, onto Walnut Grove, to Iowa, to Walnut Grove again, then to De Smet. They stayed in De Smet the longest. OK, that's enough teaching - time for recess.

Parlour. Not taken on the sly - I found it on the Internet.

De Smet is the setting for her last four books. As well as the homestead, where we camped, they had a house in the town. We went to look around the town on Sunday. As with the homestead, it is not hard to imagine how it must have looked in Laura's day. De Smet is pretty small and one of the roads through the town just peters out at the outskirts and turns into a dirt track across the prairie. Some of the buildings conneced with Laura have been moved to a central location, including the surveyor's house, where they spent their first winter in Dakota territory, the school Laura attended and the one she taught. Her family home is a block or so away. You have to have a tour to see inside them, which the Mouse and I signed up for. We both really enjoyed that and I learned lots that I didn't already know, which is always good. I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't take photographs inside the houses, especially as they have been restored faithfully and based on photographs taken by Laura's sister, Carrie. They even had a company in California make the parlour wallpaper to match the one in Carrie's photo.

Best friends for life.

On the tour, the Mouse met another eight year old girl, also dressed in apron and sun-bonnet. Now if there's one thing I'm starting to realise about eight year old girls it is that they are the best at making friends. Within minutes, Mouse and Prairie Girl were best friends. We even exchanged addresses and emails and promised to meet up. They live very close to the Pilgrims, so we reckon there's a good chance of that. Later we met them again at the homestead. The Mouse and TR showed them around and I taught Prairie Girl's younger brother to braid a rag rug.

Later that evening we made s'mores and then Mr Ruby and I watched the usual incredible thunderstorms.

Wide Open Spaces

I'm typing this in Iowa, but for the past few days we've been staying in South Dakota, at the Ingalls Homestead.

"Oregon or bust."

I've had the 'Laura Ingalls Guidebook' for a few years now and done a fair bit of armchair-travelling to the town of De Smet, SD, and wondered what it would be like to stay at the Ingalls Homestead. I'd always imagined it might be a little bit cheesy and overdone but still wished I could stay. Well, having done so, I am happy to report that it is a beautiful place, full of hands-on history and it still looks and feels much as I imagine it would have done in Laura's day. The people who run the place have faithfully reconstructed or transported period buildings, to give you an idea of what life would have been like. You are encouraged to wander round, climb on things, try out things and have a go at the many activities on offer. We had a covered wagon ride, attended an 1880s school lesson, made skipping ropes (currently in use as a washing line), corn-cob dollies, washed clothes pioneer-style (the Mouse put part of her finger through a mangle/clothes-wringer at this point, thus gaining herself an authentic pioneer-child injury - ouch!), ground wheat in a coffee grinder, twisted hay into fire-wood sticks, pumped water from a well, made button toys and had a go at braiding a rag rug.

"Not quite the horsepower I had in mind, but still..."

As campers, we were allowed to explore the buildings after hours, which meant that we could go and investigate the dugout (not just a hole in the ground, this one!), find all the kittens (Prom Queen, they almost rivalled your coterie of cats) and, the Mouse and TR's favourite: go and play pioneers in the claim shanty. TR loved 'doing the housework' and 'cooking and eating corn on the stove'. The Mouse manically worked her way through all of Ma's weekly chores, pretending to wash, dry, iron, mend and sew new clothes. She loved using the heavy irons and the treadle-operated Singer sewing machine. Since someone had to go down with them, I took my sewing down and sat at the table in the shanty, cheerfully hand stitching applique hearts onto Baby G's quilt, while admiring the beautiful view of the open prairie, framed neatly by the open doorway. I know: sometimes I am a parody of myself!

TR tests his button toy while the Mouse sews the family's winter wardrobe.

Speaking of prairie, when you drive through the midwest you don't quite get the view of open prairies, with their tall waving grasses that literature and the opening titles of 'Little House on the Prairie' might have led you to expect. Just about everywhere is ploughed and cultivated, so what you actually see are high-waving cornfields and low-waving soybean fields. However, at the homestead they have tried to restore and conserve some of the 'heritage' plants and grasses. There are more trees (including the cottonwoods planted by Pa - that gave me a little frisson, I can tell you!) and the view isn't quite the same as Laura's, but you do get a good impression. You can also still see the sloughs (pronounced 'slew') and even the 'Big Slough' mentioned so often in the books. What has remained the same are the enormous and ever-changing skies. There is a constant breeze blowing, which makes the summer climate very pleasant indeed. The sky really is impossibly blue, as a good friend of mine would have said, and the clouds are forever blowing across, grouping, re-grouping and changing shape. If all you did was looked upwards, you wouldn't tire of the view! In the evenings we watched incredible sunsets. Then after the sun went down we 'sat by the fire and watched the moon rise'. At night we watched shooting stars and, later still, spectacular thunder storms, so far away that we could see them but not hear them.

Spectacular sunset gives way to...

...a full moon over the Dakota prairie.

On the Banks of Plum Creek

After our sojourn in Wisconsin, we bade a reluctant farewell to the Pilgrims and, in true Pioneer style, headed West. Our next stop was Walnut Grove, Minnesota. En route we may not have had to swim across rivers or survive off cornbread and salt-pork fat, but we did have the more modern problem of TR being hideously travel sick. Thank goodness for baby wipes, is all I'm saying!

Walnut Grove is both the name of the fictional town where the TV series 'Little House on the Prairie' was set and the real name of the town where Laura Ingalls and her family lived for a few years. Book afficionados may note that this was the setting for 'On the Banks of Plum Creek'. As a child, this was my favourite book - not least for the wonderful story of Laura getting even with mean Nellie Oleson. (What child doesn't like to read about a bit of justly-deserved revenge?) I'd dreamed of paddling in the creek among the plum thickets and climbing up to the prairie above the dugout house, just as Laura and Mary did. I never thought I would, though.

Not so much 'On the Banks' as 'Right in It'.

Imagine my joy, then, when I got to do all of that. Even better, it was all just as I'd imagined it: the cool, clear water of the creek, the sweet-smelling prairie, and the sound of the breeze rustling the grasses and of the crickets chirping. Even Mr Ruby was impressed and he'd been very much sold the idea of Plum Creek being, 'a hole in the ground' (big shout-out to the Pilgrim Father, there!). He later commented on how quiet I was, which, to be fair, is rather unusual for me! To be honest, I was a little overwhelmed and somewhat choked up.

Straight from my imagination

Mr Ruby is good with the camera!

Back to the 'hole in the ground' though, all you can see of their dugout home is a grass-covered hole with a sign by it, so the Pilgrim Father was right about that. Apparently your average dugout home lasts 6-7 years, so I guess expecting one to last 130-odd years is maybe a little optimistic.

Me, managing not to fall in the Hole in the Ground.

We stayed a while at the Creek but didn't linger long in the town. It's a bit of a dive, to be honest! Like so many places we passed en route it had a big and rather ugly soybean processing plant, for the production of ethanol bio-fuel. This dominates the town somewhat and makes the surroundings all look a bit dingy. Now I'm not entirely sure how I feel about biofuels. I accept that we need an alternative to oil, but if you're using land previously used to grow food, in order to now produce fuel, where's your food coming from? As I say, I'm just not sure.

So, it was back in the RV for the long drive to South Dakota. But who were those ghostly figures we left behind?

The Opposite of Canada

Excuse the brief update: more detail - and pictures - when I have time and a more reliable internet connection.

We're staying in South Dakota, at the Laura Ingalls Homestead. If you've read 'By the Shores of Silver Lake', 'The Long Winter' or 'Little Town on the Prairie' (and if you haven't, get thee to a library!) you'll know what I mean when I say that we are camping right on Charles Ingalls' claim site. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, just take it from me that I am beside myself with joy!

Anyway, we are camping right next to a very warm and friendly family from Canada. They are taking a grand tour - starting near the Pacific coast in British Columbia, they worked their way across southern Canada to Prince Edward Island (a shout-out to all the Anne of Green Gables fans, there). Then they went down as far south as northern Kentucky and are working their way back home, via the northern American states. They will have been gone from home for 7 weeks in total. There are ten of them (two parents, eight children ranging from age 18 years to 18 months), all travelling in a minibus and towing a modest-sized caravan ('trailer' as they call it). That's why I've named them, 'The Opposite of Canada,' as they are a lot of people crammed into a small space.

We do seem to have been blessed in meeting with some very friendly people while on our travels. Last night we shared a campfire with them and cooked our dinner and more s'mores. Yep - Canadians like them too.

Off to the town of DeSmet in a minute, to see the house the Ingalls eventually moved to in town. Mr Ruby's getting a little Laura-ed-out, I think.

In the Big Woods of Wisconsin

Two truly awesome things happened today. Ever fulfilled a life-long ambition and felt the buzz that goes with that? Ever fulfilled the same one twice and not quite believed your good fortune? That was me today. For the second time in my life (and not the last, according to the Mouse) I find myself in Pepin, Wisconsin. It's a sleepy little town, pretty much in the middle of wide Wisconsin nowhere, but it also happens to be the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Here are two photos of us at her birthplace. See if you can spot the difference:

Brrr!

Yes, it was a little colder last time, the Mouse was much smaller (that's her in my arms) and not a resident of the 19th century. Check out the pioneer outfit: my mum made that for me in 1977!

The cabin is a reconstruction of her birthplace, but it's in the right spot and built to the same dimensions. For a family of four (later five) it really is very tiny. I reckon our RV (that's 'Campervan' in English) is possibly slightly more spacious.

That's not Laura: it's the Mouse in disguise!

We had a picnic lunch outside. TR was very taken with the ants, who carried away his picnic crumbs, as fast as he could shed them. Mr Ruby explained that, were an ant the same size as a human, it could lift a car. TR was mightily impressed and spent the rest of our lunchtime exclaiming, 'An ant can lift a car?!' The notion of scale was too much for him. As far as he's concerned, an ant can lift a car.

The second awesome part of our day (not counting the car-lifting ants) is that we spent all of it with our neighbours from Farnborough, 'The Pilgrims', who now live in Minnesota. That's awesome, right? And so are they. Here's a picture of Mr Ruby, the Pilgrim Father and the Pilgrim Mother, cooking sausages over a camp fire:

The Pilgrims school Mr Ruby in the ways of American campfires.

We also visited the Laura Ingalls Museum in Pepin, where the Mouse spent her holiday money on a pioneer outfit for her American Girl doll, Felicity, and the beach at Lake Pepin. Lake Pepin is really a wide section of the mighty Mississippi river. We had a go at swimming, but the dead fish rather put me off and I had to content myself with paddling. After that we stopped to buy sausages, which we later cooked on the fire. Then the Pilgrims taught us how to make 'S'mores': divine!

In other news, I got myself a tour of a 1964 Airstream caravan. It is parked near to our RV and I've been admiring it. In the end I wandered over and asked if I might look inside. I probably wouldn't dare do that at home, but I'm finding the English accent acts as currency here and my host was most gracious and showed me all around. It really is a thing of beauty: looks like a tin can from the outside, but inside it is like a Tardis - so well thought-out and beautifully designed, with a lot of '60's glamour and charm!

The Pilgrims and the Rubies. From L-R: The Firestarter, The Mouse, Pilgrim Mother, Tabi-Cat, TR, Mrs Ruby, Mr Ruby,  Pilgrim Father and Hannah Minnesota.

Two goats and a goose

Apparently it was TR's greatest wish that we all head off to Sister Bay today, for a spot of Crazy Golf, or 'Adventure Golf' as they call it here. I don't know: it was fairly crazy and at no point did I check to see if Bear Grylls was with us, so I think I'll go with the British term for it. First though, we stopped at Al Johnson's Swedish Cafe, to fill up on their delicious cooked breakfasts and admire the goats on the roof.

Actual goat on an actual roof.

Door County has a decidedly Nordic feel to it, what with the fjord-like coastline (I know it's not actual coast, it's Lake Michigan, but it's so big it looks like the sea!), the many signs saying 'Valkommen! and the businesses and houses almost all bearing names like 'Jensen' and 'Lundqvist'. This is good for me as, in addition to my little love affair with America, I've also got a crush on Scandinavia. Two holidays for the price of one, eh?

Al Johnson's is very popular in high season, so we had to wait a while to be seated, thus ensuring that our breakfast became brunch and we all skipped lunch. This caused the Mouse some concern later, when at nine o'clock at night she insisted that we fed her lunch, because she'd missed out on that particular meal. This was about an hour and a half after she'd finished eating an enormous dinner, so we declined to oblige her on that particular request.

A big meal!

After brunch we went to 'Pirate Cove Adventure Golf'. TR pronounced the whole experience, 'awesome!', of course. He was especially taken with the golfing greens with tunnels, where you could whack your ball into the water and watch it magically reappear on the green. Apparently these were the 'awesome holes'.

Blondie and the Mouse marvel at the reappearing ball. TR lines up for a hole-in-several.

Our adventurous golfing over, we feasted on Spongebob Popsicles and then went next door to the go-kart track. The Mouse and I declined to race but TR and Blondie played co-driver to Mr Ruby's and Dr Norton's race drivers, while Dr X sped round the track in her own kart. TR was delighted to have a ride in an 'actual Mario Kart' and declared that his dad was Mario and Dr Norton was Luigi. Blondie, Dr Norton and Mr Ruby then had a go at the softball batting cages. I'm pretty certain each of them hit a home run at some point.

Oh no: my teeth look like Spongebob's!

After a refreshing swim at the motel, we walked into Fish Creek for a Fish Boil at Pelletier's. Fish Boils are a Door County specialty and I recommend you try one, if ever you get the chance. Small fires are built outside, over which are placed large fish kettles. The water in them is brought to boiling point and a basket of fish is lowered into the kettle. Just as the fire is really getting going, they pour kerosene onto the fire and the whole thing goes up like a volcano! The basket of fish is then removed and delicious cutlets of fish are served at your table, along with new potatoes, coleslaw, a sweet onion and rye bread. Awe...wait for it...some!

All-American Girl

Slightly less awesome was my faux pas at Pelletier's, when I accidentally goosed a waiter. Mr Ruby's response, when I confessed my crime, was, 'Not again, woman!' I can't help it: I'm clumsy and I wave my arms about a lot! His backside was sticking out as I walked past. It was an accident waiting to happen. Blondie wanted to know, 'What did he look like?' My reply was, 'Shocked!'