We had to swim again this morning. It’s becoming a weird, neurotic obsession. Maybe we should move to Hawaii! 
It’s our first Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House” day. There are really 6 main “Little House” locations. One of those locations is not mentioned in the books. We are only visiting 3 of these locations on this trip. We are not doing this because we are Laura Ingalls fangirls. We are doing this because all but Little Lion dislike reading history, so we are learning history by going, instead. This is just a continuation of our American history for the year.
First stop, Pepin Wisconsin. This was the town mentioned in Little House in the Big Woods, Lake Pepin is a widening of the Mississippi River, and the Mississippi River is the great frozen river the family crossed as they left for Kansas. They listened the next morning as the river ice cracked, and realized the danger they had been in.
The original log cabin is no longer standing. A replica has been built on the same property, though, and it is always open for visitors. You quickly understand what simple living looks like. This cabin is so small. There are three rooms in the cabin, a great room, a bedroom, and a large pantry, and there is also a loft. This is where Mary and Laura slept and played. And there were the rafters where Ma hung peppers and onions on dry from. The only mar on the imagination was the fact that the trees have been cleared, and there farms as far as one can see. 
Before we left the cabin, The Lion decided this was a great place to set off fireworks. This is the joy of a California boy in the Midwest. One of the fireworks launched a parachute high into the sky, and the girls and St. George ran to catch it. Bunny got there first. 
We couldn’t leave Pepin without visiting the little Laura Ingalls museum in town. Miss Bunny used her money to buy a pioneer girl dress and a slate and slate pencil. She’s drinking it all in.
She had to wear the dress to lunch.
Heading out of town on this beautiful road toward Red Wing, I am thinking a lot about Robert M. Pirsig. His book helped form many of my philosophical beliefs. I see him riding along such a road, re-visiting old haunts, re-tracing his steps that brought him to cognitive crisis so long ago. I think most philosophers experience such a crisis at some point. They “snap,” and nothing is the same after that. Mine was a process that began when driving these very roads in my college years whole reading Francis Schaeffer, Aquinas, the Tao Te Ching, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, with a little E. M. Forster sprinkled in. and culminated the moment the pastor of the church I was attending lied to my face in front of the entire congregation, and nobody spoke up to come to my defense. That was my “snap” moment. I abandoned that church at that moment, as I then knew it was a house of thoughtlessness and cowardly evil. Every time I drive these roads, this pure landscape of emptiness and Divine art re-affirms that cognitive process. I used to pull over and lay in these fields alone until the sun set or a lightning storm warned me it was time to go. Pirsig’s character in “Zen” went crazy and underwent shock treatments. I went crazy and attached to a beautiful liturgical tradition full of repentant sinners. I appreciate Pirsig’s tale as a cautionary allegory for those of us with wandering souls. We rode our bikes through Red Wing on our honeymoon. By the time we were here from Seattle, we were all muscle and sun-drenched. Our minds were clear and determined. We already had enough stories together to last a lifetime. We had only been married a month. Brandon knew by that time what he’d gotten himself into, marrying a caution-less, wild adventurer. He didn’t seem to mind too much.
But enough of that. We found huge chickens and my divas required pictures with them.
We found a cute campground just outside of Le Seuer, Minnesota. There is a sweet playground here, as well as fireflies so thick, I can imagine veracity in the wizardry of all enchanted lands.
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