Epic Road Trip - The Final Day!

On Sunday morning, we left Tulsa at 8:30 a.m. to head to our last destination before home - the Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri.  As we were driving through Missouri, Emma says, "Who would want to live in a place called Misery?"  I said, "It's Missouri."  Emma said, "Missouri, Misery, who would want to live here?"  The drive there was pretty miserable as we encountered our first major rainfall of the trip.

The Rocky Ridge farm is the place where Almanzo and Laura settled once they left South Dakota and it was where they both died.  I enjoyed the museum which housed a number of artifacts from the Ingalls family.  Most notably, Pa's fiddle is there.  If you've read the Little House on the Prairie books, you know what a big part Pa's fiddle played in Laura's stories.

When we were walking up to the house, Cristina asked me, "Does Laura live in this house?"  She seemed to be a bit exasperated with Laura!  I guess it must be a little confusing for a kid to see all these houses that belonged to Laura, but to never actually see Laura living in any of them.   I explained to her that Laura used to live here, but she was dead.  She then proceeded to ask me, "Does Pa live here or is he dead?  Does Ma live here or is she dead?  Does Carrie live here or is she dead?"  Poor kid was disappointed that the whole family was dead.

The white farmhouse was built room by room by Almanzo.  Everything in the house was made to accommodate Laura's short height.  She was only 4 feet 11 inches.  Almanzo made several pieces of furniture and a whole rack of different canes.  He had to use a cane due to complications from an earlier illness.

 I discovered on this trip that I have an affinity for fields of haystacks.  I loved to see the hay all piled up in fields in Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas.  Below is the hayfield on the Rocky Ridge Farm.

 The girls hanging out on the steps of the rock house that Rose had built for her parents.  We were waiting on a tour.

 Crossing over the Mississippi River on our drive back to Georgia.  We ended up logging 4203.6 miles in all on our epic road trip and had such an amazing time.  Having the opportunity to see another part of the country was truly a blessing.  We're not sure what we can do to top this trip in the future.