DAY 294 Sunday 29th JUNE 2008

Minneapolis- St Paul, Minnesota (Miles to Date: 31245)

From our overnight stop in Rapid City we continue our way relentlessly East along Interstate 90. We pull off of I-90 into the small town of Mitchell, South Dakota. Mitchell is home of the world famous Corn Palace. The Corn Palace is decorated with several colours of dried corn and grains creating murals. The theme of the murals is changed annually. The building itself is used for several purposes including as an arena for basketball games and other community events. The Corn Palace festival takes place in August as part of the harvest celebration and 400,000 people visit annually to see the decorations. Unfortunately we are month or so too early. The decorations on the outside of the building are lovely but the inside is somewhat disappointing. We had expected something quaint but it is really a very functional community centre.

Never mind our real destination of the day is some 50 miles North, and the small town of De Smet. As some of you have been regularly following our blog will know we have been on a bit of a mission following the movements of the Ingalls Wilder family, of the Little House on the Prairie books fame. The Ingalls family were some of the first settlers to come to De Smet arriving by wagon from Walnut Grove in 1879! A number of the family saw their final years here, including Charles (Pa), Caroline (Ma) and Mary. There is of course a museum as well as some restored buildings to visit, including the house the Ingalls originally lived and the family home where they finally settled. Of course we had to tour all of these and the reconstructed school house which would have been very like the one Laura, Mary and Carrie would have been schooled in. The houses were very simple, as might be expected, and our guides for the tours we very adept at telling the stories of the Ingalls and putting their lives into the social context of the times. Through our journey some of the most poignant experiences for us have been visiting the final resting places of the likes of Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King. These times put things into perspective and the fact that we are all mortal. Our final destination in De Smet is the small community grave yard where a number of the Ingalls family are buried. Their graves are simple, with modest grave markers. A few quiet minutes of contemplation is observed before we head off to Worthington, Minnesota, where we are staying the night.

From Worthington it is a short drive to Walnut Grove and our continued quest to visit as many of the Ingalls Wilder sites as possible. The name of Walnut Grove is synonymous with the Little House TV series, although the Ingalls only lived there on two occasions for a total of four years. A short distance from Walnut Grove is the dugout house where they lived in by Plum Creek, but the main place of interest is the museum in down town Walnut Grove, which as a location could be easily missed. The museum's collections are housed in a series of interesting buildings, including an 1898 depot, a chapel, an onion-domed house, dugout display, little red schoolhouse, early settler home, and a covered wagon display. Also on display are memorabilia from visits by the leading stars from the "Little House on the Prairie" TV series. Every year in July there is a pageant including live performances of stories by “Laura” depicting her life and the characters living in Walnut Grove at the time.