Well that’s a mouthful of a title!  After our shake out trip of Patty the trailer at Indian Cave State Park, we wanted to stretch out our range a bit more, but nothing crazy.  So we found Fort Scott National Historic Site and George Washington Carver National Monument (and a bonus gem in Crawford Lake State Park) as some close spots to visit, build confidence with the trailer, and get some more of that Junior Ranger bling.

17 August 2018 – Travel from Kansas City to Crawford Lake State Park (Kansas)

The trip down from KC wasn’t too exciting, except for the usual traffic trying to get out of town on a Friday afternoon.  We arrived at Crawford Lake State Park, just outside Fort Scott, KS, to camp for the night.  We really enjoyed Crawford and I’m excited to share the review in my next post.

18 August 2019 – Fort Scott NHS and George Washington Carver NM

We broke camp in the morning and took the short drive to Fort Scott National Historic Site.  The south parking lot is for tour buses, motorhomes, and vehicles with trailers.  We stopped in the visitor center and grabbed our Junior Ranger books and a brochure for the self-guided tour of the fort.  We followed the tour and enjoyed the well restored and documented grounds.  The history of the fort is interesting, especially how it was influential from pioneer days through the Civil War.

We grabbed lunch in the area next to the parking lot before moving on to the next stop.

The drive to George Washington Carver National Monument took about 1.5 hours.  The parking lot has plenty of room for large vehicles.  The grounds at the monument are quite impressive.  The National Park Service has clearly invested a lot of resources into making it a class act.  The things we learned about GWC were astonishing.  He did so much in his life despite the challenges he faced in society.  We spent about 2 hours in the visitor center and walked a most of the nature trail that heads into the woods behind the visitor center.  If the kids were a bit older, we probably would’ve stayed longer and dug deeper into the history of GWC.

From GWC National Monument, we settled in for the night at Camp Mi Casa on the western edge of Carthage, MO.  We’ll share our time there in a later campground review post.

19 August 2019 – Travel back to Kansas City

We woke up in the morning in Carthage and took our time getting back home.  This was a quick trip, but a great confidence builder and it solidified in everyone’s mind that this is absolutely something we want to do as a family…as often as possible.

-See you out there

P-T ParaD