Down the Road

By Natalie - August 16, 2021

Had a quick breakfast of pastries and a chocolate duck at The Peabody! What a treat!

We went on a quest to see the duck palace but after a few attempts to get up to the rooftop, we found out it doesn’t open until 11 after the ducks go down to the fountain. Bummer.

The kids are amusing themselves well in the car. We have passed many small towns. Imboden, AR caught SG’s attention as she thought it sounded Swedish like something you might buy at IKEA! The person it is named after was from Switzerland. Then, we passed by Ravensden and had to take a photo with their town sign.

They bought the land because of the apple trees that were planted on it already and there are still beautiful apple trees here.

My pioneer girl! She brought a bonnet so she could get the feel of their lifestyle.

The museum had so many things of theirs that Laura wrote about with love and special meaning. My favorites were Pa’s fiddle, a platter she and Almonzo bought their first Christmas, and a travel writing desk Almonzo made for Laura. There were photographs and momentos from family like Mary’s college diploma and lace that Ma made.

Charlie was very bored and ended up playing on my phone so we could take our time looking! SG was more interested and knew about the meaning of their things.

Part of me wanted them to run through the wildflowers in an effort to recreate the opening scene from the TV show, Little House on the Prairie.

The original cabin they lived in is gone, but we saw this small house they built a few years after moving there. There is a larger home Rose built for them in 1928., but they continued to prefer this house and moved back into it. I guess once you're used to an outhouse, it's just hard to move up to indoor plumbing! The newer house was neat to see for the fact it was built from a set ordered from the Sears catalogue.

This land was so pretty with hills, lots of trees, and so green. I can see why they were drawn to it after traveling so far from South Dakota.

My pioneer girl was tired out.

From there we headed to Fantastic Caverns where we took a tour of the cave riding in the back of a jeep. The kids were super grumpy about going, but their attitude improved!

Our guide, Lacey, was witty and had interesting things to tell about the cave. No one could complain about being hot since it stays 60* down there!

These stalagmites were so tall!

This cave column is so cool with stalactites and stalagmites meeting!

The cave was kept hidden until after the Civil War so that the union army didn't seize the land in order to search the cave for valuable resources to make gun powder. A few years after the war, the landowner offered for someone to come explore the cave and the group that took him up on it was a group of teenage girls from Springfield! They explored many caves, but this one was completely untouched. They wrote their names on the cave wall to document their discovery. Those were some brave girls going into a cave on their own with just candles for light.

From there we headed over to Route 66 for dinner. Not a lot to see (at least in that stretch), but it gave us a great opportunity to sing, Get Your Kicks on Route 66!