From Laura Ingalls Wilder to Martin’s Cove

Mansfield, Missouri

The Laura Ingalls Wilder RV park is (as you might expect) right across the street from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum and home. This is where Laura wrote the first several “Little House on the Prairie” books.  In the visitor’s center/museum we saw the actual “Pa’s Fiddle” and lots of other artifacts from Laura’s life.  LHOTP fans will understand.  They didn’t allow photography in the museum or the houses so I snagged someone’s illicit photo of the fiddle from the internet….

Carthage Missouri  Big Red Barn RV park

One night here.  We did absolutely nothing.  Hot, and humid.

Wichita, Kansas

We spent a couple days with our friends, Duane and Beth at their house.  It was great to catch up again, we stayed with them at their cabin in Show Low Arizona last Christmas.  Wichita has some character, the downtown area is revitalized and a river runs through it.  Many old stately houses and lots of brick.  This is the home of the Koch Family, with a huge walled family compound in town.  We had some nice dinners, saw a movie in a movie theater for the first time in forever, went to church, fixed an iced up refrigerator with Beth, shopped at Trader Joes.  It was pretty much like normal life used to be. So much so that we didn’t take any photos.

Wilson State Park, Kansas

This part of Kansas has rolling hills and some trees, providing reasonably pleasant views.  It was hot and humid here too, but fortunately we had power and could run the A/C.   We swam a bit in the lake/reservoir in the evenings to cool off.  There are biting flies here, one even made its way into our trailer and bit both of us before we found and killed it.

Loveland Colorado

One night stop in Loveland Colorado.  We saw lots of wind turbines on the way, some thunderstorms, beautiful views of clouds and mountains.  It is good to be back in the West with big mountains higher elevations and a drier climate in general.  It is so familiar to me.

Rawlins Wyoming

We drove up to Cheyenne Wyoming then westward to Rawlins Wyoming and three nights at the Red Desert Rose RV park.    This is an area of high elevation, rolling hills lots of wind turbines and on that day, more showers.  Rawlin’s heyday appears to have been in the 40’s and 50’s, when the highway went through the middle of town and folks stopped at the gas stations and motels and restaurants.  Interstate 80 bypasses the town and there is a medium sized Walmart on the edge of town.  The motels are abandoned and there is still one tiny restored Texaco station with a manual pump in front which has become a minor tourist attraction. 

On Sunday we drove an hour north to Martin’s Cove, a place of significance and tragedy in the history of pioneers moving west.  I have at least 17 direct ancestors who came west in wagons and 3 who came in the Martin Handcard company. Here is a link to some info on one of my 3xgreat grandparents that was here in 1856. We walked the 5 mile round trip from the visitor’s center to the actual cove. With few visitors at the museum, and threatening rain, we had the walk all to ourselves that day.

Next up: Heading to Pocatello to have a 4^th of July reunion with some family members and see our grandchildren!  Our trailer days are numbered, just a couple stops before we plan to sell.