Enjoyed these letters and journal notes very much. Interesting to picture these places Laura describes. Some photographs have been included as well, which were quite helpful to see what America was like so long ago.

Laura noted whether the coffee was good or bad in her journaling of the 1931 road trip, which amused me.
adventurous informative reflective medium-paced

I had already read On The Way Home and West From Home several times, but had never seen The Road Back, which is the chronicle of Laura and Almanzo's road trip they took in the 30s back to DeSmet, SD to visit.

Living in Texas as I am, and currently suffering through 110*F heat, I can certainly sympathize with them as they drove from Mansfield, MO in what I'm going to assume was an un-air conditioned vehicle. With their dog. They stop several times to cool both the engine and the canine. He also enjoys ice cream treats and hamburger.

While not as descriptive as the other works, this part is still interesting to me. The roadside cabins, the conditions of the roads, and the prices Laura faithfully noted (up to the final entry), all make for interesting reading. Clearly this was not written for publication. It seems Laura just really liked to record her journeys.

On the Way Home takes place right after The First Four Years and is a record of the family's covered wagon trip from DeSmet to Mansfield, MO, where they lived for the rest of their lives. West from Home is a compilation of letters Laura wrote to Almanzo while she was in San Francisco, visiting Rose and the World's Fair of 1915 as well as one of the articles she wrote for her hometown newspaper while she was there.

I've long been fascinated with Laura Ingalls Wilder and all her books. I'm just finishing up another round of immersing myself in them. They still hold all the appeal for me that they ever did, maybe even more now that my life is more complicated than ever.

I know I'm romanticizing pioneer times and her life but I'm very attracted to the self-reliant, the frugality (opposites attract, right?), the waste not-want not attitude, the outdoors, the fewer choices.

A Little House Traveler prints two journals she kept as an adult, one when they moved from De Smet to Missouri (where they settled), and one when they returned to De Smet fourty years later for a visit and prints the letters she mailed Manly when she visited their daughter in San Francisco in 1915.

It was fun for me to read and it reminded me that while I have a certain longing for things as they were ... or I think I do anyway, there are also things I wouldn't change at all. When you moved states a hundred years ago you never knew if you'd see your family again. When Laura visited San Francisco she went for three months because she knew she'd never go again. Living apart from our families the past year and a half has been difficult, mostly because of our children, but we still see them (here and there) several times a year. We can fly or drive and either way is actually pretty fast. Even though I complain a lot about traveling, I'm pretty lucky it's as easy as it is!

Fascinating