Essence Frivoluous whimsy.
The morning we woke up to was just beatuiful. Waking in our little private forest in Tyler was wonderful and had that feel of what camping should be like. Even with a catered breakfast the Scott train managed to be nearly last out of camp. Hey why should we break with schedule, right?
As the day revved up so did the heat. Our first water stop had some wonderful doggies as visitors and everyone was so happy to once again run our hands the coat of someones pet.
Just after the water stop we saw this shocking and amazing hammock. I had to turn around just to get teh picture. In its own way, it is quite remarkable. It is jsut that my style isn’t quite this... how do I say... Purple.
On down the road, we were fullu iin Laura Ingalls Wilder territory. Seeing names on signs of places all from those Little House books we were all having flaskbacks to our childhood. Plum Creek, Walnut Grove, The House that Pa actually built. It was very strange to be on the Laura Ingalls wilder memorial highway and se those places as real places, not just fictional stories in a kids book.
We saw a sign for a Sod house reconstruction and so we turned in. Only a 1/2 mile or so down this country road, on a farm, a farmer has built 4 different sod houses and pioneer homes and is working to revitalize some natural prairie on his farm. As the 4 of us cyclists had never seen actually prairie, we were all quite amazed and found the whole self-guided tour very interesting.
First of all the prairie grass was really high. 5 to 6 feet and thicker than any corn crop. Thinking of trying to navigate across that prairie in a wagon and horses was a daunting thought. 3 steps off the path and we lost each other. Trying to keep track of a children, or enemies in that grass would have been a nightmare to deal with. We could barely see the top of the other sod houses less than 100 yards across the field. The farm lady who ran the Sod House B&B said that during Ingall’s time, they would have to stand up on their horses to see the next rider also standing and that was how they navigated. WOW!
Based on the sod houses of Laura Ingals Wilder’s time, These houses were small but extremely comfortable considering all that had to be done. There was no wasted space. Event he rafter supports overhead served as storage for harvest tools and such.
After our little tour we visitied with the farm lady. You could tell that she couldn’t actually understand what would possess us to ride our bikes across the country and just thought we were crazy, versus motivated. She introduced us to her farmer sun, who had even less interest in us. He certainly gave the impression that, cycling stories were best saved for the endo fhte day when his real farm work was done, and that he shouldn’t be bothered with such non-sense during the day. It certainly was an interesting reaction.
Moving on, the day was hot and we didn stop much. I did however stop for this 7’ tall statue of “The Real Linus”. Zoom in and read the plaque. This is a memorial for the real Linus and instructor of Charles Chultz who wrote the “Peanuts” cartoon.
Just to make the day complete as we were all about to fall over in pain, the last half-mile was up the steepest hill we have climbed yet, to the ground of Martin Luther College.
Once at the top we all got to the lawn and just laid out next to our bikes on the cool grass. a little cooling off and we were really ready to unload and have a day off.
So after the Laura Ingalls Flashback, the side trip to the Sod houses and even the silly roadside sightings, itdefinitely seemed like a day of whimsey.
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