A wedding in May has given me the perfect opportunity to visit Rocky Ridge Farm!! My poor husband has been bombarded with facts, routes and side trips to visit. I’m sure he’s looking forward to June when my peppering of stories should die down.
I’ve been starting to research the trip and going through WordPress to see other people’s experiences. Kathleen Ernst at sites and stories blog had a great article. She addresses the elephant in the room when it comes to historic tours of authors. One can be so excited to visit the little house in the woods of Wisconsin or on the lush prairies of DeSmet but it can be the actual homes where these works were created that can be overlooked.
A year ago I biked for 10 days around Prince Edward Island (my family loves to bike and I also love Lucy Maud Montgomery so really I was bribed into a cross country bike trip). While the original trip was planned around Green Gables it was walking through the haunted woods across the street that I stumbled unto the real home of Mrs. Montgomery. It was here on land still owned in the family that I saw the excavation of her original home growing up and met her family that still use the land as a working farm. It’s these smaller stories and meetings that I treasure from that trip. I’m excited to see what the Ozarks have in store for me!
I will admit that when my sister and I began planning visits to all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites, I was most excited to see the places I’d read about in Laura’s Little House books. That did not include Mansfield. After visiting? All I can say is that it is a very special place. […]
little history on the prairie 