After sharing the adventures of our literary family road trip on my Instagram account, I received so many questions that I decided to write a full blog post giving you a bit more information. Perhaps you too would love to follow the path we took through the pages of our favorite books as each location truly made the stories come to life!

First of all, I must talk about the reasoning behind our pilgrimage. As a homeschooling family and lovers of literature, we are passionate about reading. We read together every day and books are sacred friends. The Bible is the greatest book you can read with your children. Other books that I would highly recommend are those that inspired our visits. This has definitely topped every other homeschool field trip we’ve ever taken! Not only did literature come to life, but so did human history! Something that struck me was how many people exclaimed how much they loved “that movie” or “that show” when we would arrive at one of the locations on our trip. Don’t get me wrong, some screen adaptations are very beautifully done, but nothing is as good as the original.

Put yourself in the shoes of an author. They write from the depths of their soul and give us a gift that is a written piece of their very being. However, when Hollywood gets the rights to a book, they don’t care what the author was truly saying or know what they were feeling. Hollywood pursues what they think the consumer will love best while pushing their own agenda. Above all, they are motivated by box office sales. Needless to say, you can’t know a story unless you have read it first hand. So as I share the works of art on our itinerary, I hope that you will look for these titles at your local library. After all, reading quality literature is scientifically proven to also help improve brain function and growth. It feeds the mind and soul through a door that only the written word can. A television screen does quite the opposite.

The main goal for our trip was to visit the locations from the books our children were named for and then visit any other sites pertaining to books we love that might fall along our path. The result was extraordinary! Since we were on a tight budget, we also camped in a tent or stayed in gifted housing, cooked most of our meals, and only saw museums or did free activities. Here is a map of our path across the US and into Canada and back home.

We live in Kansas, so we basically started our adventure a week before we set out on our road trip, by attending The Prairie Day Festival at the real location for the book The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. You can learn more about the historic site by watching my video tours on my Instagram highlights entitled “Ingalls Farm.” I also of course highly recommend reading the book. While the 1970s show is a wholesome family show, it is not based on the Little House books or Laura’s real life in Independence, Kansas.

We had to pack up the car full of camping gear and get on the road to visit our next literary location. Finding beautiful state parks and other campsites along the way was more than just finding a place to sleep. Those nights in a tent together along our journey and the meals we cooked on an open fire served to enrich our road trip experience. We had so much fun! June was the perfect time of year for every place we visited. Though there were a few colder nights and one rainy night, nothing was beyond what we could handle. I got many questions on Instagram about safety and bathroom facilities. I will tell you we felt very spoiled! Campgrounds have really stepped up their game since I was a kid. All of the bathrooms and showers we used were very clean and well cared for. As for safety, I had to laugh because if you watch the news you know that the city is where the “bad guys” usually are. Animals, like bears or raccoons for example, were kept away by the general fear of humans and by keeping all food in our car at night.

When we arrived in Malone, New York we were so excited to have the opportunity to visit another location from The Little House Books. The Wilder Farm is the authentic home of Almanzo Wilder and the real site of the book Farmer Boy by his wife Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is honestly my favorite book in the series! You can see a full tour in my Instagram Highlights titled “Wilder Farm.” We loved this experience so much that we stayed until the museum closed soaking up every chapter of Almanzo’s story. Did you know our daughter’s middle name Rose is after Almanzo and Laura’s daughter Rose? We also named our pig Lucy after Almanzo’s childhood pet pig.

Next stop was Camden, Maine. It is the location that inspired us to name our eldest daughter Camdyn Grace, based on the beloved book Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. I won’t spoil the story because I want you to read this touching book, but it is worth mentioning that Sarah is a mail-order bride who travels from Camden, Maine to her new family in Hays, Kansas. Ironically, we made the opposite journey. You can see our Camden adventures in my Instagram highlights. What a gorgeous piece of God’s creation! Wow, no wonder Sarah spoke so fondly of her seaside home. I’m so glad our little Cami Grace got to see it with her own eyes. We did change one letter of the spelling to make her name more feminine. She was simply beaming when she saw how beautiful the place she had read about and was named for really was. Secretly, I think she wanted to stay longer. However, we had to move on to our next literary location which just so happened to be the place that her baby sister is named for.

Avonlee Rose is named after my obsession with the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, which are set in the town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, Canada. There are 8 books in the series so you can really get to know the orphan Anne Shirley. The books are loosely based on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life. Though Anne always gets her “happily ever after” at the end of her trials, in real life Lucy Maud’s story isn’t quite so happy. We were blessed to be able to stay at a friend’s little cottage during our visit to P.E.I., which also had a kitchen. This helped us tremendously to be able to afford such a road trip. Many people asked if we needed a passport to visit the Island. The answer is yes, but because we are in the process of an international adoption Michael and I already had our passports. We just had to get the girls each a little passport card. They only work for a few countries and the children’s ones are only valid for 5 years. So, they are less expensive than a regular passport book.

We stayed at the cottage on the island for about a week enjoying the seaside and all of the historic sites from the author’s life. It was like stepping into the pages of the Anne of Green Gables books. I cried so many times because it was all so surreal! Our little Avonlee thought the whole Island and books were named after her. At the age of 4, she was so enamored with everything on her beautiful Island. We did change the spelling of “Avonlea” to “Avonlee” to honor her grandmother Cindy Lee. You can see more of our experience by watching my story highlights on Instagram titled “Avonlea PEI” and by reading through all the related posts on my Instagram feed.

When it was time to head back home to Kansas, we made sure our journey would take us past 2 more incredible literary locations. First, we stopped for an afternoon at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire. This was where the Frost family lived from 1900 to 1911, the longest they ever lived in one place. According to the museum guide, all of Robert’s best loved poetry was either written here or was inspired by their time here. I completely believe him! That farm was magical from Hyla Brook in the woods at the far edge of the hay pasture and orchard to the 1884 farmhouse, everything was inspiringly beautiful! I honestly didn’t want to leave. I think I said that about each place we visited, but it was always true! The reason that all of these arists could write such incredible books was because of the locations they described. There’s just something about God’s handiwork that sparks creativity in His greatest creation, humanity. I hope you read The Poetry of Robert Frost and let it soak into your heart. I have fond memories of my husband reading Frost’s poetry to me back when we were dating. It was so romantic. You can also see a full farm tour in my Instagram story highlights.

Finally, we drove through Concord, Massachusetts to visit the last literary location on our list. We were so excited that Orchard House from the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was on our route home! That book is a true classic that every girl should read. We also love all of the other books we have read by Miss Alcott, namely Little Men and Jo’s Boys, but Little Women is our favorite. It is based on her real life and family, which is why visiting their beautifully preserved home is so important. It is even fully furnished with the family’s own belongings. You can see every room described in the book, plus breathtaking artwork by May Alcott (called Amy in the book) and even the wedding dress of Anna (Meg in the book) that she worn when she married the real John. But it was seeing Lizzy’s (Beth) piano that made me cry. You could just feel the love in that house! There is actually so much of our ideas of education wrapped up in the Alcott story. Did you know that Father Alcott is credited with the invention of recess and the idea of raising your hand to ask questions in a classroom? We learned so many cool things visiting Orchard House. I have highlights and a post about our visit on my Instagram feed, too.

We drove the rest of the way home knowing we had spent our first ever family vacation in the best way possible. It is truly an adventure we will never forget. As we approach our ten year wedding anniversary in November, we realized we had let so many worries stand in the way of making memories together like this. Having young children, lots of farm animals, and a tight budget were the main concerns that always made us say, “maybe next year we will take a family vacation.” We always spent Micheal’s time off visiting extended family or restoring our farmhouse. Those are good things, but we realized we were letting our short time with our own children slip away.

It’s incredible to see how God began to work out all of the details so that we could take our dream family road trip. He provided a friend in Canada with a cottage we could borrow, my parents let us borrow their tent, and Micheal’s parents helped with the lodging too. The most incredible thing of all is that our neighbors were willing to care for all 50+ of our livestock, the garden, the orchard, and the farm while we were gone. That is no small task! They came twice a day to feed and water everything, and knowing that our riding lawn mower broke, they even mowed our entire farmyard. We were blown away by God’s provision of overtime work to pay for gas and our old car behaved beautifully. So if you are one of the many people who shared with me that you too dream of taking your family on such a literary road trip or some kind of family vacation, I would encourage you to stop thinking of it as impossible.

I hope this post has given you a taste of the path we took to visit the incredible locations of some of literature’s most beloved works of art. I hope you are inspired to read the real stories rather than just let Hollywood tell them to you. I hope you start to believe that an adventure like this is possible for you too no matter what obstacles are standing in your way.

A friend of mine wisely reminded us that our time with our children is very short. It is important to read and do things together that will have a profound and lasting effect on what they value, enjoy, and believe.