A weekend trip to Kansas City was both a history lesson and a trip down memory lane.

My wife, daughter and I took the drive north to Kansas City last week and decided to make a stop along the way at Fort Scott National Historic Site, in eastern Kansas.

From the site’s website; When Fort Scott was first established in 1842, the United States was a young divided republic. There were no states west of Missouri and the states that did exist were divided over the issue of slavery. But even before soldiers first arrived at Fort Scott, events were set in motion that would dramatically change the nation.

There was never a battle fought at Fort Scott, however, it proved to be a training site for soldiers in the mid-to-late 1800s. One building on this site was a hospital and one housed prisoners.

While no battles were fought here, Fort Scott served as a critical base of support and logistics for Union soldiers fighting in the area. Fort Scott was the focal point for one of the most diverse assemblage of Civil War soldiers, who played a vital role in patrolling the Kansas Missouri border and the trans-Mississippi West.

It was especially a treat to be walking the grounds and visiting the buildings at Fort Scott on the weekend before Memorial Day, as the parade ground was covered with U.S. flags.

My family and I are history buffs and enjoy going to our beautiful National Parks and Historic Sites whenever we travel around the country. We keep track of our visits by using the National Parks Passport; a small book in which we can put stickers from the various sites we visit and stamp a page with a postmark type stamp with the date of our visit. This has become a great memento of our travels.

We didn’t know anything about Fort Scott before our visit, and that makes it even more gratifying that we took the time to stop and get an education on a very important outpost in our nation’s history.

If you’re ever in the area along eastern Kansas, along U.S. 69, it’s definitely worth the stop to take a tour of Fort Scott, for history’s sake. Allow yourself about an hour to walk from building to building and see it all.

TOY MUSEUM A TREAT

While in Kansas City, we decided to visit the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures. If you’re a fan of miniatures, this museum is sure to please. For some, like myself, it got a little redundant; many of the displays are of tiny pieces of furniture and dinnerware placed in tiny replica homes or rooms.

However, it is impressive that there is so many miniatures housed in one place. The museum is home to the world’s largest collection of fine-scale miniatures, and it takes up the entire ground floor level of the building.

Each and every display is impressive, but one thing you don’t want to skip is the “artist’s studio,” which has videos showing how the tina objects are created and hand painted. It truly is a specified art form.

The second floor of the building it dedicated to a large collection of vintage toys and games, some dating back to the mid-1800s. A doll from 1861 and a doll house from 1866 really stood out as some of the oldest toys represented.

However, for my wife and me, we took a walk down memory lane finding toys and games we had as kids in the 1960s and 1970s. It sure did bring back memories, and I kept finding myself saying, “I had one of those,” and “we played that game at my cousin’s house.”

The price of admission is only $10 for adults, but seniors and children get a discount, and it was well worth the price. If you ever visit, you really need to allow yourself three hours to see it all and to read the descriptions. We didn’t know what to expect going in, but were thrilled that it kept us entertained and engaged for so long, in fact, we lost track of time and realized our next planned stop would be closed before we got there, so now we have a plan for our next visit.