Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway Guide by Mike Gleue

Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway Guide Reviews

• 
  Sheryl Tribble

  The Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway follows Laura's travels from Wisconsin through Iowa and Minnesota to South Dakota, so it includes all the major LIW sites except Kansas and Missouri. This book is designed to be used as a historical reference along that route, and the author tries to cover, not just the major LIW sites along the way, but other historically interesting sites as well. The only hotels, campgrounds, or restaurants specifically mentioned are those that are somehow connected to the books historical theme (i.e., an opportunity to stay the night in a sod house); this is not a standard travel guide. The author does recommend particular towns as more likely to have chain hotels or accommodations with the sort of amenities most modern travelers expect, and has some warnings about making reservations early for festival times, but that's about as specific as he gets.
  
  I would like this book better if it had maps -- it doesn't even have an over-all map of the Historic Highway, which particularly annoys me since I can't find one on the Internet, either -- but that's my only real gripe. The prose drifts toward pedantic or stilted now and then, but generally it's pretty straight forward, and the author has a quirky sense of humor that shows up in most of the longer discussions (except where it would be quite inappropriate, as when he's discussing The Dakota Conflict of 1862). I found it entertaining enough to read in an afternoon, even though I have no real plans of taking the trip anytime soon.
  
  Recommended for any serious LIW fan. I am totally buying this before I start touring the sites -- although I hope it's been updated by then, since the most current copy I've seen was updated in 2001.