South Dakota Day 19

Ingalls Home in DeSmet

One of the ways that we are passing the time on this trip is by listening to the Little House books. We are currently about halfway through By the Shores of Silver Lake. Except for Seth, we've all read the books before, but we are still enjoying them. 

Today's adventure was to stop in DeSmet, South Dakota. That is the town where the final five books take place. Ironically, those are the books we haven't gotten to on this trip, but we were still excited.

We had to drive an hour and a half to get to DeSmet, but we left early and arrived just in time for a tour. We stopped at the Surveyor's House that the Ingalls stay in at the beginning of By the Shores of Silver Lake. The house is original, and several of the artifacts belonged to the Ingalls family or friends. We also saw the school house where Laura first taught, and the school where she went to learn, which were different buildings. 

It was neat standing in the places that we had read about.

We read stories about these beds upstairs and how they would get covered in snow.

Here are pics of all the Ingalls.

The surveyor's house was a fun tour.

This is the school house where Laura and Carrie went to school.

Some of the original blackboards are still up.

The best part, though, was driving across town to the home that Pa built for Ma. It was exactly as she left when she died in 1924. We saw a lot of artifacts there, too, including Mary's books, original art on the walls, but mostly Pa's craftsmanship. The home is still in great condition even after 140 years. 

This is a picture of Ma later in life.

Mary's braille bible was so cool!

Mom loved the dishes and original cabinets that Pa built

A pig bladder ball!

Dax was having none of it.

Seth liked learning about the Ingalls.

After the home tour, we had a picnic in the park and then drove over the cemetery. Mary, Carrie, Ma and Pa are all buried there. Laura is down in Missouri where she lived with her husband. It was a really fun day, and we are looking forward to the rest of those books!

You feel like you know them so well after reading the books.

We had a long drive after the tour. We needed to get all the way into a town called Dickinson, North Dakota. We made  one quick stop in Bismarck to take pictures of temple. The Moroni statue on this temple looked different. Instead of just having his hand down, he was holding a scroll. It was so interesting.  

The boys entertain themselves by taking crazy panoramas of themselves.

The Bismarck temple was small.

What is Moroni doing with the scroll up there?

We arrived late into Dickinson, but we still let the kids go to the pool because it had a huge water slide. That slide was fast! We loved the pool and our time sliding, and Mom liked taking pictures. It was nice to have some fun after a long ride.

The water slide was a huge hit!

Seth went SO many times!

Mark loved it, too!