Do you come from a land down under?

Started off kinda early (for us anyway) on a road trip to see the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas (about 52 miles Northwest of Wichita). Well after finding it after a few wrong turns and missed signs (what signs there were), we showed up to a relatively empty parking lot (which should have been a clue to us).
Upon going to the front entrance we found out that unless we think of something else to do, we had three hours to kill since the museum had a delayed opening because of a power outage.

We decided that instead of killing time and not having much time to visit the museum when it did open, we would backtrack our path back to Wichita a bit. We made our way to back to Yoder, Kansas (which by the way is a very old fashion Amish community..which we might go back to visit later) a few miles south of Hutch. Outside Yoder lays the Kansas Salt Museum, one of the 8th Wonders of Kansas (yes...the land of Oz does have some wonders!). Its unique in that its the only Salt Museum in the Western Hemisphere open to public tours.

Well 2 minutes of total darkness (there abouts) and 650ft down, we arrived at the Musuem. Tia wanted to proceed straight to the gift shop (she's got the touring thing all backwards!), but we went out the guided tram tour, snaking our way through various areas of the mine on a very interesting ride. After that it was on to the walking/self-paced area that had made up the major exhibits of the museum within the mine. We saw the history of the mine and how the mined salt. There was also an area that told the history of the world when the salt in the mine was first formed some millions of years ago (before the dinosaurs).




One very interesting area was the Underground Vaults & Storage area where we saw how they stored important documents and articles for different companies.







Film reels and various movie props.








Plus various costumes from different hollywierd movies.

































After all this, Tia finally got her wish...we made it to the Gift Shop (yeah she's permanently infected with the shopping bug)! Disappointedly she didn't see anything she wanted to buy (with her money), so she ended up with a T-shirt from her generous grandmother.

After 2 1/2hrs of waiting, touring the mine and musuem, then more touring...we were finished. We decided to kill alittle bit more time by making it back to Hutch to go to the grab a quick bite and hit the Mall.

All in all it was a very interesting day. I can really say that I went where the sun really doesn't shine.

Unfortunately they didn't have the shirt in my size :(