With summer vacation time just around the corner, it’s not too soon to be finalizing plans for that special getaway with the kids. Why not, this year, consider making your trip educational as well as fun? If you live in California, you’re in luck.

The Golden State has fascinating educational getaways just about every direction you look, but we’ve come up with three specific suggestions that each offer a fun experience for the whole family and some first-hand information the kids can use to take back and impress their teachers next fall.

Sacramento

If you thought Sacramento was just any old state capital, be sure to plan an extra couple of days next time you’re driving through the area. The city is like a theme park for historians, art lovers and just about anyone who wants to know more about the Golden State – including your kids, who will eventually study California history.

It’s tempting to say it’s a theme park for adults – but it’s really not just for adults. In fact, a visit to Sacramento probably will be one of the most beneficial field trips your youngsters will ever take. They’ll learn about government, the Old West, railroads, Native Americans, the Gold Rush and several other subjects featured in dozens of Sacramento exhibits and museums.

We stopped by the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, where we obtained maps and a long list of attractions in the city. The CVB is just around the corner from highlights like the Governor’s Mansion and the many beautifully maintained Victorian homes and architecture found throughout the downtown area.

We then drove over to take the obligatory pictures of the State Capitol Building, keeping an eye out for California’s movie-star governor.

We stopped in the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts, which offers colorful and descriptive displays about many of the women who have been instrumental in helping California grow to its present stature. As with most museums we visited, visitors could spend several hours in just this museum soaking up fascinating facts about the Golden State.

For history buffs, maybe the best place in town to go is Old Sacramento, which has a number of museums including the California Military Museum, Discovery Museum History Center, the Old Sacramento Interpretive Center, the Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum and the Wells Fargo History Museum.

Topping the historical list is the California State Railroad Museum which is said to be one of the country’s best railroad museums. The 100,000-square-foot museum features many actual railcars as well as various real locomotives. A train station replica allows you to see what a 19th Century station was like and, in spring and summer months, the museum offers steam train rides.

Old Sacramento attempts to re-create much of its early history and it seems to be working – it now attracts more than 5 million visitors each year. The area has been restored with cobblestone streets, gaslamps and wooden sidewalks, and you do get the feeling of walking through a town from the Old West.

For more information on Sacramento, contact the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau at 1-800-292-2334 or visit Discover Gold.

Columbia State Park

Another fun, educational place to visit is California’s Gold Country in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada where gold was discovered in the mid-19th Century, setting off a population explosion that helped shape what California is today. And maybe the best place to get a sense of what it all was like back then is Columbia State Park, hailed as the state’s best preserved ghost town.

Actually, Columbia is far from a ghost town. Several local business owners are alive and well, thank you, operating park concessions that help re-create the feeling of a town in the Gold Rush era. On any given day you’ll find people all over town dressed like it was still the 1800’s and doing all they can to create the illusion that you are traveling back in time.

Columbia’s Main Street does look like a movie set except that the downtown stores are not just storefronts but actual historical buildings. There are about 40 brick buildings and 10 wooden structures all built back in the day when thousands of miners would come into town to get their supplies before returning to gold claims that ultimately produced $67 million worth of gold between 1850 and 1870. That may not be impressive using today’s price of gold, but when you consider that gold sold back then for just $20 an ounce, you start to realize that this area’s gold production was massive.

Columbia got its start in 1850 when a group of prospectors were caught in a rain storm and, while drying out their gear, John Walker – no, not that John Walker – decided to look for gold. He found so much that, within six weeks, thousands of miners had descended on the area in search of their fortunes. By 1852, more than 150 stores, shops, saloons and other businesses were operating in Columbia. By 1853, as many as 30,000 people lived there.

Once mining had run its course, the town’s buildings deteriorated to the point that, in 1945, the state stepped in and began restoration efforts. Columbia became a state historic park and now includes the largest single collection of California gold rush-era structures.

There are about 20 businesses and 20 static history displays that visitors can peruse on their visit to Columbia. Among the businesses are such authentic enterprises as an Old West hotel, blacksmith shop, a couple of cowboy-style saloons, an ice cream parlour, a mercantile and a dry goods store. There’s a bank, a firehouse, a couple of candy stores, a barbershop, bookstore and then various exhibits that explain some of the historical buildings and how they were used. Especially enlightening is the museum, where an excellent collection of historical items are on display.

For more information on Columbia State Park, call 800-777-0369 or visit Parks.

Angel Island

Angel Island is a prominent part of the San Francisco Bay panorama and it also played a prominent role in the history of San Francisco. The island has often been compared to New York’s Ellis Island because of the immigrants who stayed on this island while they were waiting to enter the United States.

The island has been a popular destination for hiking, biking and exploration for the decades since it became a state park in the 1950’s. Only accessible by boat, Angel Island is a quick ferry ride from Fisherman’s Wharf and an especially good day trip for San Francisco visitors. When they arrive on the island, they’ll find a quiet, peaceful, almost idyllic landscape with pretty coves, modest hills and picture-postcard vistas of the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County.

One short hike from the landing is to the Immigration Station Barracks and grounds, just a 30-minute walk to the northeast. Most people have heard of Ellis Island and the immigrants who came to New York by way of that immigration station, but many don’t realize that San Francisco had this very similar station on Angel Island. We enjoyed stepping into the Barracks to view the dramatic wall carvings left by Asian immigrants who were detained here an average of two to three weeks while entering the country. Most immigrants affected where Chinese, who were the objects of legislation to limit their immigration to the U.S. The poems on the walls are written in Chinese and span the years from 1910 up until 1940 when the Immigration Service left the island.

But the Immigration Station is just part of the story of Angel Island, which offers a rich tapestry of military history that had soldiers based here for 99 years from 1863 to 1962.

A good way to see the island is to take the Perimeter Road to the southwest from Ayala Cove, location of the ferry dock. In about a mile, you come to Camp Reynolds, where the officers’ quarters are still intact and available for tour. Further along Perimeter Road, we came across another big part of the island’s military history: the remnants of the Nike Ajax missile site. These were cold war era non-nuclear missiles that were stored in magazines here on the island where they could be brought out and launched in time of hostilities.

Also on the Perimeter Road is Fort McDowell, a beehive of activity during World War II, but operating on the island for all the years from 1900 to 1946. When World War II began, the fort became part of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation and more than 300,000 soldiers were shipped to the Pacific Theater of Operations through Fort McDowell.

For more information on Angel Island, phone 415-435-3972 or visit Angel Island.

For more information on travel in California, please visit California Weekend.