When we pulled into our campground at Scenic State Park, I noticed that most all campers had a screened tent over top of their picnic table.  We didn’t bring one of those.  I immediately thought… mosquitoes, and knew that we’d be spending our evening inside the camper. 

Charlie made hamburgers in the cast iron frying pan for dinner along with gluten free mac and cheese and peas.  It was delicious.  While he was cooking, I read some more of our literature book with the kids.  We’re nowhere near finishing, but we’re making progress.

While hanging out in the camper for the evening, we discussed our plans for the next week.  Annette really wanted to be back in SC for an awards banquet for her boyfriend.  Amelia has a cheer camp that starts the day we are supposed to be returning.  We decided that we would let Alex, Annette, and Amelia leave early with the Honda to drive back to South Carolina. 

They will be leaving Sunday morning.  We have a friend’s house that they can stop and spend the night at, and Alex and Annette can share the driving.  They wanted to stay one more night (tonight) with us, so we decided to drive in the direction of home instead of following our original plan to go to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

We decided to prioritize going to Pepin, WI, the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the location of her book Little House in the Big Woods.  Pepin is on the western border of Wisconsin on the Mississippi River, so we drove through Minnesota toward Duluth and then down toward St Paul.  There were so many things that I had intended to do.  I wanted to stop in Duluth to go to the Duluth Trading Company store (they have some good quality clothing that I really enjoy) and to see Lake Superior, but we drove right through instead, not feeling that we really had the time to stop. 

After driving through the cities, we crossed the Mississippi into Wisconsin and got on the Great River Road which follows the Mississippi River through several states, all the way to the Gulf.  This road was so scenic.  I love driving through small town America.  I would highly recommend that drive if you get along the Mississippi River area anywhere.  Again, we didn’t have much time to stop, so we drove straight to Pepin.

In Pepin, we went to the museum first.  They had some Laura Ingalls Wilder history there as well as some of the history of local people that would have been a part of her life (the local doctor and Laura’s first teacher).  They also had just general memorabilia from the time period (1870s) such as spinning wheels, looms, original clothing, cooking items, tools, etc., as well as history specific to Pepin and Wisconsin. What I found the most interesting was a family tree that actually showed multiple marriages between the Quiner (Laura’s mother’s family) and the Ingalls families, so that Laura and her sisters actually had double cousins. 

After we finished at the museum, we drove to a replica house where Laura was born that was built on her parents’ original property.  Since we showed up on a Saturday, we were fortunate to have some living history historians present.  They were able to tell us more about living in that time period.  The weather was beautiful, and the setting was so peaceful.  Their house was seven miles from the town of Pepin, and we were told that the road to Pepin was the same road (only paved) that was present in the 1870s.  This allowed me to imagine Laura’s few trips of riding into town since it would have taken considerable time.

We didn’t spend much time there as we needed to make it to a 4:30 Mass that afternoon, so we headed out to the town of Wabasha.  I love it when you are driving into a town or city and you see the spire(s) of a beautiful church in the distance.  As you get closer to this beautiful church, you’re really hoping that it is the Catholic Church of the town that you are seeing.  This is what was happening as we drove into Wabasha (which is back in the state of Minnesota.)  I was so excited to see that we were making turns to reach this beautiful church that I had seen in the distance.  This beautiful church turned out to be St. Felix.  We easily found a parking spot for the RV on the road and went inside for Mass.

After Mass we continued driving (it was a long day of driving on Saturday).  We found a Thousand Trails campground outside of Wisconsin Dells and settled in for the night.

Rebecca