Sanborn, Minnesota - Sod House Bed and Breakfast

"An Eerie sense of hardship," touts the headline on the brochure for the Sod House Bed and Breakfast. If that sounds like what you're after for your romantic week-end break, then it can be found in Sanborn, MN. The Sod House on the Prairie is not only a Bed and Breakfast, but it's part of a network of Laura Ingalls Wilder tourism in Minnesota. Fans of the book come here, pay quite a lot of money ($150 a night for a family)m dress up in costume and stay in a sod house with no running water or electricity. Actually, if such a thing existed for other famous authors, I'd be all over the Jane Austen Regency Mansion Bed and Breakfast or Herman Melville whaling excursion.

Aside from the exhibits of the sod houses there are some nice little trails through restored prairie that were really the highlight of the trip for us. The phrase "an eerie sense of hardship" has entered our family lexicon to mean any run down old place we see on the side of the road. [Jenny the Nipper, 09/02/2008]