Little House and Big Weather

The last leg of our trip to Minnesota was all about Laura Ingalls Wilder. We planned to see two different spots she and her family lived, including a festival, complete with a Laura and Nellie look-alike contest. The countryside changed from the blanched plains that seemed to go on endlessly, to the giant patchwork of crops in varying shades of green broken by low lying lakes and dark stands of wood. We stopped at the Akta-Lakota museum in Chamberlin, South Dakota which had some great traditional clothing including a whole display of tiny moccasins.

In the afternoon, we finally made it to De Smet, where several of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books take place. The homestead that belonged to her family is now a living museum - we crawled around the barn which was a dugout in the side of a hill, complete with a family of kittens that made the girls' day.
We got to churn butter, try out the straw mattresses in the bedrooms of the house, pump water from the well and take a ride in the covered wagon to the school house that Laura taught in when Almanzo was courting her. It was a great day - thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.

The next morning we went to Walnut Grove, 40 miles east and the place where "The Banks of Plum Creek" was. It was a sweltering day - nearing 90 and very humid. What was supposed to be a charming festival in the center of town, was actually a strange mix of bad fried fair food, a tipi with a New Agey middle aged white woman selling crystals and dream catchers, a mini-train, and a Laotian community booth selling egg rolls and woven wall hangings. The only cute thing was the Nellie-Laura look alike contest, which had about 40 little girls all dressed up and answering detailed questions as if they were the characters in the books.

Well, it was way too hot to waste energy being disappointed, and we had our hearts set on getting to the cabin, so we headed north.


 As we drove, I saw the clouds on all sides of us massing. I called Jeff and he said we would be experiencing some weather on the way. Tornadoes? I asked, oh no....just some thunderstorms.

I might just be a kid from California, but what followed was one of the scariest things I've ever driven through. The storm front was a bizarre layering of black and white strips, the air was still as death and there were all sorts of eerie colors - bronze, jade, saffron, tinting everything around us weird shades. I took a deep breath as we entered the front - it was hanging above us like a iron blanket; I could see through to the other side, where a wall of rain looked white as it dashed against the trees. But above us hung menacing black tendrils, circling slowly well below the actual cloud head. As we drove through a tiny town, I saw a bunch of people pulled into a gas station and all staring upwards. I rolled down my window and heard the high-pitched screaming of the tornado siren going off.


My pulse began to race; and somewhere in the back of my head I heard the Crazy Voice - the voice of my dad, the steeple chase racer, the one who gambles big and sometimes wins. "You can outrun this thing." it told me with an evil grin, "Maybe..." I answered myself, not knowing what the heck I was talking about. I've never even been near a tornado. But I knew that getting seven kids out of their car seats and into a basement in an unknown location was not the option I was looking for. We were SO close to home - only about 30 minutes away. I turned on the radio and heard the tornado warnings - about 10-15 miles on either side of us, but such a big storm system, that it had the potential to change at any moment. As the commentator told everyone to take cover, I pushed 80.

Stupid, stupid me, but Jeff, the seasoned Minnesotan, was on the cell phone coaching me as we drove."What county are we in?" I screamed at him, listening as the radio mentioned the tiny town we had just left. "Please take cover and assist any elderly or infirmed neighbors that are living near you." I heard, my hands fumbling with the big map as I tried to drive and peg our location at the same time.

We hit the wall of water on the other side with almost the same ferocity as taking a plunge into a wave. I flicked the windshield wipers onto their highest setting. I felt better, perhaps erroneously. Anything was preferable to the beautiful, deadly calm we had just driven through. It was raining harder than I've ever seen it rain in my life. Branches were blowing across the road, Vera was sobbing in the backseat, a tree knocked down a telephone pole to our right sending sparks flying out in our path. Thunder and lightning seemed to bear down on top of us. We were still going pretty fast, but I was losing the other two cars behind me. "You HAVE to keep up with me," I yelled at Krista, "Matt's hydroplaning!" came the reply. I studied the map - only a few miles to go, and on either side of us, wide ditches filled with water - no houses, no shelter. The crazy rain and wind from every side continued on for what seemed like an hour, although it was probably just another 20 minutes. The tornadoes were to the east and south of us now - we were threading the needle and it felt good. I could hear my dad laughing about it, about me white knuckling Minnesota weather with three kids in the back, battling childhood fears of getting sucked into the sky by a tornado: what a homecoming.

We pulled into the driveway just as the storm eased up. Two huge branches lay in our path, completely covering the road. I used adrenaline from the last 45 minutes to shove them out of the way and then we all came tumbling out of the cars as a fresh wave of thunder and rain hit.

We melted into Keith and Nini's house, warm and welcoming with its lights shining out over the lake. The kids ran to play in the basement, the adults were all handed margaritas, and proceeded to collapse onto the couches. If  I had known what I was going to drive through when I got up in the morning, I think I would have turned around and driven the 2,000 miles back to California, no question. But it was exciting and exhilarating all the same and it seemed a crowning achievement, a rite of passage, for our weary band of travelers who had traversed the country together.