Night on the Prairie

From the recreated Little House on the Prairie, we drove west, pausing for a brief sojourn into Oklahoma so that we could add that state to our list of states.  By this point we had been through

1.     Virginia,

2.     Maryland,

3.     Pennsylvania,

4.     West Virginia,

5.     Ohio,

6.     Indiana,

7.     Illinois

8.     Missouri,

9.     Kansas, and

10.  Oklahoma.

Returning to the wide open and rather lonely highways in Kansas, I was struck by the number of trees growing in the eastern part of the state – wind-breaks, young trees in abandoned fields, trees along the river banks.  The last gasp of the great eastern USA forest that had accompanied us since the first miles of our journey.

Kansas is a long state to drive through particularly if you have detoured far away from the interstate highways and are mostly traveling on two-lane roads.  We filled up on CNG in Wichita, and the headed west toward Colorado.  A night drive.  David was strapped into his bed on the top of the load.  Anna and Miriam slept in their car seats.  Sarah and Leah each made the best of the two seats available to them.  Kansas wound onwards for miles.

The thunder and lightning began around Wichita, and continued for most of our traverse of the state.  Sometimes it rained where we were.  At other times we only saw the evidence of it raining elsewhere flash across the sky. 

As we climbed into the high plains, a long string of red blinking lights appeared in the distance.  An airport?  It was hard to tell how far off they were, but as we drew closer the bulk of the lights became apparent.  We entered an absolutely enormous wind farm which stretched on for miles in all directions.  Gigantic wind turbine after gigantic wind turbine.  All turning in the trans-continental breeze. 

A day for Laura

From Saint Louis we changed plans from the original itinerary.  Instead of heading straight across to Kansas City and then on to Denver on the interstate, we turned south on I-44 and then a series of back roads to the Laura Ingalls Wilder homes in the Ozarks and on the Prarie.  Today was a day visiting locations associated with Laura.

Rocky Ridge Farm in the Ozarks is a beautiful spot.  Little wonder Almanzo said that Laura insisted that they buy the property when they arrived as refugees from drought, ill-health, and crop failure in the 1890s.  A few apple trees are planted to represent the acres of trees they had in their orchard, and a small garden reflects the gardens they had planted -- the farm itself is no longer operational.  But the house where Laura lived for much of her time there -- one that began as a two-room farm house and expanded gradually to ten rooms.

My favorite spot was Laura's writing room -- a small space with a desk, seats, lots of light from the windows.  The desk faced away from the windows, toward the living room.  Patricia liked the library alcove off the living room -- a space entered through a doorway defined by the chest-high built-in bookshelves, with shelves built on all of the walls. Miriam didn't like much about the house -- it was BOORING and she was TIRED of being CARRIED and TOLD NOT TO TOUCH, so I explored the grounds with her while the others finished the tour.  We found raspberries, and young apples, and a chicken coop.  The springs that drew the Wilders to Rocky Ridge have gone dry with the declining water table of the region, and they no longer run.

From Rocky Ridge, a beautiful, shaded site in the woods of the Ozarks we drove three hours more-or-less due west to the location of the "Little House of the Prairie" or at least an approximation of its location based upon reconstructions of old census and other records.  A small recreated log cabin built in 1977 is gradually rotting away, and provides habitat for insects and mud dauber wasps.  Two other historical buildings have been moved to the site -- a post office and a school.  The prairie sun was hot, and the wind blew.  Patricia's favorite spot was the school house.  Several of the children seemed to most enjoy petting the residents of the nearby mule and donkey pasture.

Patricia was delighted to find a natural bug repellant mix made locally in Kansas that included all the ingredients she had bee planning to use for her own concoction, and bought a large bottle.  Miriam was delighted to discover some stick candies.  Sarah purchased a bonnet.  After this, it was time to buckle in for a long over-night drive across Kansas and eastern Colorado for sunrise on the outskirts of the Front Range in southern Colorado.