My boys and I unbuckled our sandals and slid down a muddy bank, slipping our feet into the cool waters of Plum Creek -- Laura's Plum Creek.

Joe chased minnows. Isaac wandered into still, dark water, then suddenly stopped and lifted the hems of his shorts to examine his wet calves. Laura Ingalls, I recalled from reading her Little House books, had once taken revenge on mean Nellie Oleson by sending her to a similar spot -- maybe the same one. And I knew what Isaac was looking for: leeches.

Before I had children, I dreamed of taking my daughter on a pilgrimage to run in the prairies where Laura ran, to splash in the waters of Plum Creek. My husband, Jeff, and I were blessed with sons. Fortunately, Isaac, at 6 last summer, was as enthralled by the stories of Pa's can-do inventiveness and Laura's naughty streak as I had been.

So we made the trip I'd longed for, traveling to several significant sites, including Plum Creek (though not in the same order as the wandering Ingallses). From our home in the Twin Cities area, it would take us more than 450 miles, from Pepin, Wisc., south to the Iowa border, and then north and west along Hwy. 14 through Mankato to Walnut Grove, Minn., and De Smet, S.D.

As we prepared for the trip, with Google maps, online travel guides, an iPod, cell phones, audiobooks and DVDs, I reflected on Ma's packing list: blankets, corn meal, salt pork, utensils, clothing, the little china shepherdess. Leave the rest behind.

City passed to suburb, farm and forest as the boys and I drove east to Pepin, Wis., Laura's birthplace. We followed a lonely road off the highway to a tiny replica cabin, built to replace the one that had gone from home to corncrib after the Ingallses' departure. I took in the cornfield behind the house, the few tall oak trees. The thick cloak of green described in Little House in the Big Woods had long ago been cleared for farming.

Isaac ran through the door, peered into the fireplace, climbed the ladder to the loft, checked out the two tiny bedrooms, then did it all again. No woods? No problem.

The boys ran outside, found sticks and started a sword fight. When Joe lost interest, Isaac looped his Pokemon cards onto the stick, which he slung over his shoulder all day.

HEADED TO IOWA

From Pepin, we zig-zagged south along country roads in Wisconsin and Minnesota, bound for Burr Oak, Iowa, where the family moved from Walnut Grove, Minn., after the death of their infant son, Charles. Along the bluffs of Hwy. 43, red-tailed hawks and bald eagles wheeled overhead.

Tiny Burr Oak was silent and lonely on a Sunday morning. The museum we'd come to see -- the old Masters Hotel, which the Ingallses helped run during their difficult hiatus from Walnut Grove -- was closed. We passed time in a park. As I watched Joe and Isaac throw stones into a creek and play on a decrepit merry-go-round, I thought again of Ma, beaten back east to this town, mourning her only son, and I resolved to be more thankful.

When the museum opened, Clara Bergan -- a sweet 16-year-old whose claim to fame was as Little Miss Laura 2002-03 -- showed us the kitchen where Ma cooked and the bedrooms where Laura and Mary had bedmaking and chamber-pot duty. The boys tried not to touch the period china and textiles, but they enjoyed scratching on an old-fashioned slate.

We went home to Minneapolis for a few days, picked up Jeff, and then all four of us headed southwest. We looped to Mankato, our starting point on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway, also known here as Hwy. 14.

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