didn't ma ever go anywhere?
Although I'm a real home-body myself (except for research trips!), I wonder about Caroline Ingalls. She arrived in De Smet (or what would become De Smet) in September 1879 and as far as I've been able to figure, she only left the county that one time in 1881 when she and Pa took Mary to college. So in her forty-three and a half years living in Dakota, did she only leave the one time? Didn't Ma ever go anywhere?

We know that Pa took Mary to Chicago. We all know where Laura went. Carrie traveled to the west coast, and she spent years living in Colorado and Wyoming. Grace vacationed on the west coast and in Minnesota. Rose was all over the world. But Ma stayed home. After Pa died, it doesn't seem that she even left the neighborhood.

Obviously, Caroline Ingalls really meant what she wrote before her 1860 marriage: Who could wish to leave home and wander forth in the world to meet its tempests and its storms? ...Not one. It seems to me, though, that Ma had her own share of tempests and storms no matter where her home was, and whether she left it or not.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:18 AM