Start: Independence, Kansas
End: Garden City, Kansas
States: Kansas
So Today we drove across Kansas, which explains why I needed a snappy title for my blog post. I jest, my impressions of Kansas are still very favorable despite their misguided affinity for two lane roads (we did hit traffic, which was guided by two poor lone people with big stop signs on sticks literally frying on the pavement). The title comes from our stop for the day, are you ready for this? The Little House on the Prairie.
Now a caveat, this is not the original little house however it is the original location, meticulously researched before they constructed on the site. The Ingalls family only lived near Independence for about a year, though their third daughter Carrie was born there. If you don't know the Little House books (ie are a man) they were written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her life in the latter half of the 1800's, starting with her life in Pepin, Wisconsin around age 4 and traveling all the way until her marriage, first home, and birth of her daughter as an adult. They are pioneer adventures to a certain degree, but they are also true and describe the harsh realities for life as a pioneer without the shoot-em-up edge a lot of stories take. They describe the mundane tasks of ordinary life along with the blizzards, disease, and native attacks.
The show starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, though called Little House on the Prairie is actually an amalgam of characters and places from many of the books. The title refers to Nellie Olson, the blonde haired little girl from town who had Satan in her soul, in reality Laura didn't meet her until long after her time in Independence. The site itself is some miles south of town, and quite out of the way, which makes it ideal to visit. We were the only ones there except for the lady manning the gift shop and a stray cat I made friends with (Alyssa had to be very stern with me so I didn't try to take it with us). There is also a rural post office and one room school house from the 1880's (the same era as the farmhouse that holds the gift shop). The Ingalls family lived in Independence about a decade before at the end of the 1860's, however the general idea was the same.
The house is impossibly small, maybe as big as a hotel room, maybe. THere were five people living there; Ma, Pa, Laura, her older sister Mary, and a baby (how was this baby conceived may be the better question?). For those of you with siblings, or anyone with a sense of personal space at all, can you imagine? It felt uncomfortably close with Alyssa and I in there together and neither of us is taller than 5' 4", let us hope Pa was no much taller. It sure doesn't sound like much, but believe me it left a warm fuzzy feeling, and not just because I was wearing shorts and the weather was so hot it was making my skin fuse with the seat. It has the same appeal as a Norman Rockwell painting, safe and homey, even if its no home you've ever been to.
As we crossed into western Kansas it got flatter but no less green, again a welcome surprise. It took us almost five and a half hours to cross this one state, I'm glad we hadn't attempted to go from Mississippi to Garden City as originally planned. Now we have been blessed by Jesus, Thor, and other deities along the way with unusually good weather (hot yes, but hot and sunny). Other than the fourteen hour carnival ride from hell in rain and fog that was Pennsylvania the driving was almost eerily smooth. About twenty miles from Garden City the sky started to take on a strange hue with the strangest cloud formations I've ever seen. Are you getting flashbacks to the beginning of the Wizard of Oz? Because I am, da-dun-da-dun-da-dun-na (in case you were wondering that was Miss Gulch on her bicycle/ Wicked Witch on her broom). You really can see rain coming at you from across the plains, and lordy did it come, in sheets, in bucket, industrial strength fire hoses held by hunky men, you name it the water came in that method. Visibility was fairly awful, but I used the old tried and true method of following the yellow lines (because the gentleman in front of us did not seem to think turning on his headlights in a downpour was a good idea).
Then checking into the hotel was entertaining, first unloading the car in the driving rain (I commandeered a luggage cart, which was very fun) then parking in the furthest row from the door because those were the only free spots. We were assigned our room number, 318 so we went up and tried the door, and the keys don't work. I waited outside the room with our luggage while Alyssa went to remedy the situation. She came back and the door opened to reveal...someone else's luggage. Apparently the keys hadn't worked for a reason. Finally we were reassigned and moved to room 419 where we nested in for the night. I spent far too much time being a social butterfly and talking on the phone last evening to actually post, however I can't always be a crotchety misanthrope. But I can try.
