Anniversary Trip (part 1)

Last month my husband and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary. We celebrated by taking a trip to South Dakota. Now, that doesn’t seem like a place to celebrate an anniversary, but neither of us had been there before. Reid wanted to go to Mount Rushmore, and I figured since we were going there, why not swing by De Smet and visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum and Homestead?

I read the Little House books when I was 12 years old, so much so that the covers fell off! I taped and re-taped them, and even had to make another back cover out of paper, because the cover was so mangled.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is the main reason I wanted to become a writer. I loved her books and even tried writing a story when I was about 13 years old. That didn’t turn out so well, but I had the writing bug, I just didn’t know how to channel it.

We started our trip on Thursday morning with breakfast at Nana’s Kitchen in Falcon. Even though it’d been a few years since we’d last eaten there, their food was just as good as always.

Having eaten our fill, we headed out on Highway 24 toward Nebraska. We didn’t realize how many wind turbines there were out on the plains of Colorado. Vast fields of them, some turning, some not, but all were massive. I don’t know why, but watching them is mesmerizing.

After the wind fields, there were cows, then corn fields. You tend to think of corn fields in Iowa, but there were a lot of them in Colorado and Nebraska. Reid wanted to stop and play a round of golf, so we found one in Nebraska—across from a corn field! We both got a kick out of that. While Reid played, I read a book. I started out sitting in the car, but then decided to sit in the shade of the golf clubhouse. It was a lot more humid in Nebraska than in Colorado, so the breeze was nice.

For lunch we found an Arby’s to eat at. It seemed like that was the only place to grab something quick that we both knew (I just can’t eat at Burger King or McDonalds anymore).

Back on the road, I took over driving duties for a bit while Reid napped. Not much to write about during this part of the trip. It’s flat, there’s lots of corn fields and hardly anyone else on the road. Our GPS took us on some back highways instead of main highways, which was kind of cool.

We could see storm clouds forming and we hoped the storms weren’t severe. I didn’t want to see any tornadoes firsthand! I pulled off the road so we could switch drivers, and got a good look at the storm that was now in the distance.

As we drove, I could see “things” going across the road coming out of the fields. I finally figured out that it was frogs hopping across the highway! Poor frogs—they make a horrible squishing sound when they are run over, and they also hit the side of the car. Thud-thud-squish-thud. Not anything we could do to avoid them, unfortunately.

We passed into South Dakota and found a Subway to eat at for dinner, then found a hotel to stay in.

Next week—De Smet and the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum.