5:30am this morning I was awakened by an almighty crash of thunder!! It was so loud and then all I could see was lightening flashing. It was a little scary. We were in the middle of a SEVERE thunderstorm and I was a little nervous because the area we were in had recently been flooded. Scary stuff!!

I fell back to sleep and eventually got up at 8am. We are adjusting to our new time zone. We had a quick breakfast and then it was HIT the road time....well, not quite. We were out the door and we were at the car, but then Bryce discovered that the change he had made to his computer bags messed up the packing so he had to redo all that. Finally we were on our way. We needed to go to a pharmacy so found a Walgreens down the road. We got there and it was closed!! Sure wish GPS could tell you that or not. We went to Walmart instead and got all that we needed, but we were REALLY late leaving Iowa City.

We finally were on the interstate and heading west to Des Moines and then north to Minnesota. It was a beautiful day after all the rain and we had a great drive. We passed through Ames, Iowa where my parents had lived in their twenties. All my life I have heard about Ames, Iowa and there I was. Cool indeed. We continued north and then we made it across the border into Minnesota.

We still had ages to go before we got to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. You may be asking yourself "What is in Walnut Grove?". Well, for all you Little House on the Prairie officianados, Walnut Grove is the little town where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived when she was 7 years old until around 11 or so. The book that correlates to this area is "On the Banks of Plum Creek". Never in my life had I imagined that I would actually be on the banks of Plum Creek and be at the site of her dugout house on the bank. So, so, so, COOL!!!!!!!! We had a lot of fun exploring around the area and the kids waded in the creek a bit. Laura always described flowers in her books and the owners of the land where the dugout is have purposefully allowed the wildflowers to grow back. It was so fun to see those.

After Walnut Grove we had another hour drive to Brookings, South Dakota where we were to spend the night before going to another dream come true place tomorrow - De Smet, South Dakota, where Laura lived in her teens and got married etc. Soooooo excited!!!