I’m sure Laura wasn’t really ruining my tolerant husband’s life, nevertheless it was a good joke when we found this book in our travels. Our next major destination after Rapid City was Mackinac Island in Michigan. It’s a long way between these two points, but low and behold, when I used a ruler to find the midway point between the two it landed on Pepin (which just happens to be the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder). I was so excited! I planned an overnight stay in Stockholm, a little village close to Pepin in Wisconsin. I prebooked all the accommodation for this trip as it can be hard to accommodate six people travelling together in peak season.
The beautiful Spring Street Inn where we stayed for the night was the only place on our whole prebooked trip that didn’t require credit card confirmation. I emailed the owner (with the very intriguing address of sippi river drifter), who replied that I was in the book for 19 July and just to turn up. When we did turn up around 9pm, the inn keeper was sitting outside having a jam session on the ukulele, playing our favourite tunes! It created a very welcoming and attractive atmosphere.
Our Lonely Planet guide alerted us to the fact that there was a great slow food cafe (hard to find in the US), on the shores of Lake Pepin. Sometimes we dwardle a little (well, a lot really), in our travels from A to B, but once I told my husband about the restaurant he was very focused on getting us to Pepin on time for dinner! It was a big day, given we had 627 miles or 1,010 kilometres to cover. I’m happy to report we made it and dinner was sensational! Once again they were interested to see Aussies off the beaten track and the restaurant owner and chef were very interested to read the write up in the Lonely Planet about their establishment.
We had very little time in this area (Stockholm had some beautiful little shops which sadly were closed by the time we arrived and not yet open by the time we left), but I’ve put it on my list to revisit should we ever return to this neck of the woods. The Mississippi River (which we followed and crossed over a lot of the way here) was misty and mysterious with tangled vines and overhanging vegetation covering much of its banks. It stirred some early memories of watching Huckleberry Finn at the drive-in as a child and made me really want to return to explore more, as well as to read Huckleberry Finn for the first time. The village had free bikes to borrow, which were fun for an early morning ride to poke around a bit.
Before we hit the road again we stopped at the Little House Wayside where you can visit a replica of the house described in Little House in the Big Woods. The house is located on the plot where Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 and is now surrounded by farmland, but was a dense hardwood forest when Laura was born. There is enough natural vegetation left to imagine just what it would have been like back in 1867. It was amazing to stand on the very spot described in the books and also to see Lake Pepin which is referred to often. I felt very blessed to be here and to visualise the places that had lived in my imagination as a child.
Since arriving back home my kids have been inspired to read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. Did you grow up reading the Little House books? Who was your favourite character?