Laura Ingalls' DeSmet Home

This week my friend Beth and I took our school age girls to DeSmet to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites. We have both repeatedly read the Little House series aloud to our students over the 20 or so years we have home schooled. Beth and I met at the first home school conference I ever went to and our families have been friends ever since. They have moved here and there, and now hail from Washington State, but we get together whenever possible.

We stopped first at the Harvey Dunn museum in Brookings and got to see Dunn's and other artist's works. A quick stop at SDSU's dairy department for the homemade ice cream (cookies and cream, butter brickle and butter almond!) refreshed and fortified us.

Our tour in DeSmet included the Surveyor's house, a replica of the school Laura taught in, and the real DeSmet school Laura and her sisters attended. Also we saw the house that Pa built for the family in town after Laura and Almonzo were married, and we visited the grave site where Pa, Ma, Mary, Carrie and Grace and baby boy Ingalls Wilder are buried. We saw many authentic artifacts, including Pa's big green book of animals, letters in the families' own handwriting, and household items owned by the Ingalls family. For IngallsWilderophiles, it was a great day.

Trivia: What were the three things the Ingalls ate the first night they stayed in the Surveyors house? (By the Shores of Silver Lake-Chapt. 14) It was considered a FEAST! (I knew this answer on the tour.) The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder is truly one of our favorite things. Answer: canned peaches, pickles and crackers