The Little House in the Big Woods is the Laura Ingalls Wilder home site closest to where I live, so naturally I haven't been there. But I have been to Lake Pepin which they crossed on the ice on their way west. The scene is a tense one as they hear and feel the ice cracking and shifting beneath them.

Bear that scene in mind as you look at these photos of Lake Pepin, because these photos were taken less than 24 hours after ice-out. If the scene in Little House in the Big Woods is accurate, the Ingalls were cutting it very close, indeed.