We have two more driving days before we reach our Colorado destination. We got an early start and left our Bull Shoals campground to head north into Missouri and then Kansas.

Checking out Atlas Obscura, we found out that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s homestead was just a few miles off our route. I watched the TV series back in the 70’s and read a couple of the books, but knew nothing about Laura. The stories took place during her childhood in Walnut Grove, MN. She moved to MO with her husband and daughter and built their life on a 200 acre farm, Rocky Ridge. It wasn’t until she was in her 60’s that she started to write her stories, and everything in those stories is true to her life.

When Laura and Almanzo’s daughter, Rose, moved back to the farm, she built her parents a stone cottage on the property. This is where Laura wrote her first few books. They lived in the stone house for about 8 years, then moved back into the farmhouse.

Immediately after Laura’s death at 90 (in 1957), the homestead was turned over to the foundation that runs it today. Because of this, all of the furnishings in the house are original, and the museum has a large collection of family treasures. Pa Ingalls’ fiddle is on display in the museum, and it gets played every year at the Wilder Days celebration. It’s a very nice presentation and preservation of an influential American author.

Our next stop is the 2nd largest fork in the world. At 35 feet tall, it was the tallest until a 37 foot tall fork was built in Oregon (we’ll add that to our bucket list😊). It does remain the heaviest at 11,000 pounds. It’s tucked in behind an office building, but was worth the side trip.

Our last night camping westward was at Cheney State Park in Kansas. I think I picked the windiest spot in the state to camp. The campground is on a point extending into the Cheney Reservoir. It’s so hard to know what these campgrounds will be like when you book your site. I purposely chose a site at the very end of the point, close to the water. Other than the whipping wind, it was a good spot. There were 4 other campers that night, so another very quiet night. We woke up in the morning to no wind, and set off for our longest driving day to Boulder.