Our campsite was in Kansas, but all our sightseeing was in Missouri. It was confusing but we figured it out!

Did you know there are two Kansas Cities?  One KC is in the state of Kansas.  The other is in the state of Missouri.   Were you also aware that the Kansas City you think of, is really in Missouri?  Somehow, I missed that.  When you spend most of your life in New England, as I have, the more obvious geographical facts about the central plain states go overlooked. When I was planning this trip almost a year ago, I was looking to visit the Kansas City, on the Kansas side of what I thought was a straightforward equation. So, I picked an RV campsite in a town called Merriam, KS, which was a short distance away from Kansas City, KS, which literally is on the border with Kansas City, Missouri. This way I could say I visited Kansas City in two states. Makes sense, right? Yeah, come to find out, not so much. There is nothing of any great interest to see in Kansas City, Kansas. And believe me when I say, we tried!  Not only that, but the boundary line differentiating the states just runs directly through what appears to be the same city on a map. We’ve done a fair bit of traveling and visited many states whose borders often follow a river. But not KC!  Drive on a parkway or street in the city and freely flow from one state to the other. Come to find out, the city leaders of Kansas City, KS only adopted the name in order to capitalize on the growing city on the Missouri side of the state line. So, staying in Merriam, Kansas, was actually the best way to explore KC, Missouri. Not really that confusing after all.

Our campsite in Merriam, KS was remarkably well situated for almost daily travel into downtown KC. Just a 12-mile ride from our campsite found us at our first attraction: The Money Museum at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. The facility is huge, and handles money for branches in Denver, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. The museum takes visitors on a tour of the Federal Reserve System, and actually allows visitors to watch the money be processed, with a peak into the money warehouse. The warehouse houses millions in paper money and coins, which supplies currency to all its branch locations and banks. Hundreds of millions of dollars in currency is processed each day. The museum also houses the Harry S. Truman coin collection of American coins. The collection starts with American coins minted in 1776 and goes all the way through to the present day. 

Just down the street from the Federal Reserve Building is the Crown Center.  A showcase of mixed-use urban redevelopment from the 1960’s that still maintains its attractive features today. The 85-acre shopping and entertainment mecca houses the Aquarium, Legoland, Convention Center, hotels, and restaurants.  But what we mainly wanted to see was the world headquarters of the Hallmark Company, and the Hallmark Museum & Visitors Center. Hallmark was the brainchild of a determined teenager, Joyce C. Hall in 1910, and has become an enormous private company in the retail, greeting card, and television industries. And YES, the company is still privately owned and operated by the third generation of the Hall family. A remarkable accomplishment in today’s business environment. Hallmark has a terrific visitors center and museum, and we really enjoyed our 3-hour visit, getting a number of very memorable pictures. Hallmark has a humorous card division, Shoebox, which has created a recurring and very funny character named Maxine. Maxine and Judy really enjoyed each other so much that they decided to dress alike for the following picture.

Judy with Maxine "Dressed for Success"

,...and the Emmy goes to!!

I was surprised to learn about the longstanding and close working relationship between Hallmark and Disney. Hallmark artists are allowed to paint and create Disney characters on ornaments, and in cards, and the two major companies share a lot of artistic licenses. Hallmark artists are routinely trained at Disney studios, with Disney artists. Fascinating! Hallmark has a very successful cable channel and some of their original movies and productions have earned the channel multiple Academy Awards. There is an original Emmy on display and the public is allowed to take pictures with the real award. How neat is that! 

Come to find out that there are a lot of art and artists in the KC area. Who knew? I did not. KC is a hot bed of visual art, anchored by the KC Art Institute, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. And Judy and I got a firsthand look at the exterior art installations and sculptures whilst touring the grounds of these wonderful institutions on a Segway. Segway tours are an outstanding way to see neighborhoods or campuses because they allow you to cover a greater distance and see more. We zipped through the art school campus and zoomed along the sculpture gardens. What a great way to take a 10-mile city tour in about 2 hours or so.  Lots of fun and easy to handle.

Throwing pennies into fountain @ Kauffman Memorial Garden

 

It was nice to tour the grounds of these magnificent art museums, but would have been remiss if we had not returned visit to see the art inside the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  A great art museum with an impressive collection, which includes works by Caravaggio, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Andy Warhol, just to name drop a few!  The museum also features architectural pieces like stained glass windows and centuries-old furniture housed in two impressive buildings. We parked on a street near the entrance to the Sculpture Garden Gallery and strolled through the display on our way to the entrance. Along the way, we passed by a really interesting, art inspired, mini-golf course on the museum grounds. Take a look.

Mini Golf Hole # 4: Nelson-Atkins Museum Grounds

Andy Warhol's Portrait of Marion Bloch @ Nelson-Atkins Museum

Spending a week’s worth of time exploring a city affords us the luxury of exploring all different types of museums. Some of my readers may be able to relate to the experience of sightseeing in a really great place with a lot to explore, whilst also having time restraints. In such cases, there are those attractions that end up being relegated to the, “if I ever return here again,” list. If we were in KC for a shorter length of time, I’m pretty sure that the National Museum Of Toys & miniatures (indicated as T/m) would have been missed. Such a cool little museum started in 1982, by a couple of very inspirational women, Mary Harris Francis & Barbara Marshall. The museum was last expanded in 2015 and now contains more than 93,000 objects. Judy and I were attracted to the “toy museum” aspect of the attraction, as we have had occasion to visit other toy museums across the country. What we did not anticipate was how captivated we would be by the amazingly extensive collection of full miniatures. Everything from doll houses and furniture, to miniature musical instruments, and entire vignettes of miniatures, also known as room boxes. Each so minutely hand-crafted and detailed so as to be exact replicas. We were lucky enough to walk in just before a museum curator started a 90-minute tour through the first-floor miniature collection that might have spurred our fascination. In any event, we did eventually make it to the second floor to enjoy the toy portion of the museum. 

National Museum of Toys and Miniatures T/m

One last observation. There seems to be a lot of public art and water fountains on display in the downtown KC area. We did some walking and driving around the city, in addition to our Segway tour, and I always seemed to notice a large statue, abstract sculpture, or a fountain spouting water. I’ll tell you another thing I noticed… there is a hint of color starting to appear in the leaves of the trees that we pass as we travel east. Fall is approaching and we must be moving on to our next stop. In just a couple weeks we will be back in Massachusetts, but we still have a few stops left as we start to wrap up our 4-month journey. So please check back as we tell…the Rest of the Story.