De Smet — General
The Prairie is a Dangerous Place
What image comes to your mind when you hear the word prairie?
I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to romanticize our view, choosing to remember Laura’ s vivid descriptions of that large empty flat land with the enormous sky and beautiful lakes and extraordinary sunrises, instead of the truly dangerous place that the prairie
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The Truth About Silver Lake
We really need to have a talk about Silver Lake.
You see, just this week I’ve read comments concerning it on two different blogs of recent visitors to De Smet. One states that she is going to visit “Silver Lake (which, sadly, is no longer a lake)” and the other remarks, “Silver Lake is now a slough.”
Interesting.
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For Those of Us With Boys …
I do have a daughter, but she’s an independent, think-for-yourself kind of girl, and the fact that I have mildly suggested she read On the Banks of Plum Creek (we’ve read the first two together) before we go to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota this summer has pretty much made her determined to not even
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The Spirituality of Laura Ingalls Wilder
One of the questions I’ve often been asked by visitors to my website pertains to Laura’s religious beliefs. What did Laura believe about God and spirituality? While this question is impossible to answer in one respect, since Laura is no longer with us to ask, we get a pretty good idea of what Laura’s religious
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The Prairie House Manor
Among the earliest citizens of De Smet was its banker, Thomas Ruth. Banker Ruth receives several mentions in The Long Winter as having bought out the lumberyard and then the last bag of flour at costs higher than the Ingalls family could have afforded anyway. In 1894, the year that Almanzo and Laura left De
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Visit Laura’s Homesites Online
In my other life I’m a sometimes-magazine writer. Lately I’ve been getting my ongoing work in order, and part of that includes preparing for a trip report I’ll write on visiting the Little House sites this summer. I’ll be traveling from Pepin to Walnut Grove to De Smet and I’m taking my family along: my
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Vacation Planner: Part 3 — Traveling During Pageant Season
Are you getting excited about your Little House vacation yet? I am! Get out your calendars — it’s time to choose a date.
The most popular time to visit the northern Midwest sites (South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin) is definitely July, the “pageant weekend” season. Three weekends every summer, local talent performs an outdoor drama based
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