Burr Oak and LaCrosse
Driving from Iowa to La Crosse, WI | Laura Ingalls Wilder Sites in Burr Oak, IA | Hiking in Hixon Park in La Crosse, WI | June 2026
After readjusting to Central Time zone and a few days spent with our niece and nephew, we said our goodbyes and moved back into the van. We had loved our European vacation, but there’s nothing like traveling in your own home, and feeling less reliant on others for basic things like a bed to sleep in, means of getting around, a place to store and prepare food. It had also been almost 2 months since we were last in the van, so despite it being hot, we were relieved to be back in our tiny home. At this point, we had about three and an half weeks before Curtis’ next assignment, which he planned to fly out of Iowa for so I could have a little more family time before his fall schedule was in full swing. We decided to spend this time in Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota in order to save on gas rather than trying to squeeze out the most we could out of a trip out West. Our ultimate goal was to visit Curtis’ sister’s family in Northern Minnesota over the 4th of July. There was still a week between now and then though, so we knew we wanted to take our time; visiting new counties, hiking, and making the most of our Wisconsin State Park Pass while we have it.
We headed towards Northeastern Iowa, retracing roads we hadn’t driven since our Honeymoon. Just North of Decorah we stopped at the village of Burr Oak. Here is the ‘missing link’ of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Laura and her family passed through Burr Oak in between ‘On the Banks of Plum Creek’ in Southwest Minnesota and the ‘By the Shores of Silver Lake’ in South Dakota. Burr Oak was perhaps left out of Laura’s books as it immediately followed the death of her brother, and was around this time that her sister Mary contracted scarlet fever and went blind. However, her youngest sister Grace was born in Burr Oak, so their time here couldn’t have been all bad.
We had lunch outside the museum, which is also the only confirmed residence the Ingalls family lived in that is still on its original site. We toured the schoolhouse, which shared all the requirements for teachers as well as the challenging questionnaires they must pass in order to teach. The Ingalls daughters would have attended here, but Laura wouldn’t have begun her teaching career until they were settled in De Smet, SD. Then we walked through the visitor center and enjoyed reading through several letters that Laura wrote to teachers and students across Iowa and Minnesota. We now only have one more ‘official’ site related to Laura Ingalls Wilder, which is her home in Missouri along with her grave. If you’re interested, here are the posts related to other sites we’ve visited: Pepin, WI; Independence, KS; Plum Creek, MN; De Smet, SD; and Malone, NY (Almanzo Wilder’s home).
From here we continued North into Minnesota and then East towards the Mississippi River. The scenery of the driftless region was beautiful as always, we always enjoy finding more parks to explore in this area. We crossed the Mississippi River at La Crosse and found our way to Hixon Park and Preserve at the base of the bluffs. There were several hours until night time, so we went for a long meandering walk to the top of the bluffs. We were a bit disappointed that the views were mostly of nearby Grandad Bluff, and not of the river valley. But it was still an enjoyable walk. The La Crosse region office of the National Weather Service is situated right up there on the top of the bluffs, and we walked passed their giant radar on our way to another lookout facing East. As we were walking, we passed another camper van that had a “Buen Camino” sign sitting on their dashboard. We never saw the owners of the van, I assume if we had we would have had a lot to talk about!
On our way back to the trailhead, we took other trails down, making it a nice 5 mile loop for our evening hike. There were no signs against overnight parking, so we ended up staying right here for the night.
