We got an early (6:45am) start of it today...pretty fitting since we were going to the salt mine! While Stockton is a charming town full of wonderful people that seem to be one big family, there isn't much to do there so you have to drive to get just about anywhere to see or do anything (the closest Wal-mart is about 40 miles away). Our first destination today was the salt mine in Hutchinson which was 3 hours from Stockton.
The salt mine is a working salt mine but of course we were in the part that has been mined and now a museum. Once you check-in, you don a hard hat and then load into the hoist (elevator) to head 650 feet below the surface. The majority of the 90 second ride is in pitch dark. The temperature down below is about 60 degrees...very refreshing compared to the 105 top side. The salt mined in this mine is used by towns all over the country to salt their roads during the winters. There are other mines in the area that have salt pure enough to make table salt.
Just like for the miners, they track visitors as they go down
and come back up from down under.
Throughout the mine there were displays and videos describing the mining process and the life of miners. There is a saying "what goes down in the mine, stays in the mine" so there was all sorts of old equipment and various personal items from the miners left behind.
As the mine is huge, they have two different trains and trams you can take to see way back in the mine and of course we took both of them! This is when we really got to see a lot of the things left behind and evidence of the blasting that took place...including old boxes of dynamite (don't worry, they were empty!).
The first train was like the train the miners use so we got a really good idea of what is was like for them to get to their job site.
Because the mines are at a constant temp of around 60 degrees and it is so dry, many movie and television studios store original costumes and film/TV reels down there. The state of Kansas also stores their vital records here which is apparently why it takes so long for folks to get copies when they request them according to our guide.
After spending several hours underground, we headed top side and over to Yoder for lunch. Yoder is a Mennonite town and we heard Carriage Crossing was a good spot...it did not disappoint.
On the drive back home, we stopped in Wilson, the Czech capital of Kansas if you didn't know. The main attraction is the World's Largest Czech Egg so of course we had to stop!
We've seen a lot of wind farms on our travels. According to my uncle, the farms we see in Kansas feed power as far as California and the ones we saw in Nebraska feed power to the East Coast.
When we got back home, some of my uncle's family was in town so they popped over for a bit. My aunt is the definition of the hostess with the mostest as she invited the 9 of them to stay and have dinner with 4 of us on the spot and made so much food we even had leftovers!
Tomorrow we head to Oklahoma and must leave Mike and Lavinia unfortunately but luckily, they will be in Charleston soon!
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