Road Trip - Day 23

Wow. we had a very busy day! After a delicious brkfst (Good stuff, Lola) we headed to  Hutchinson to visit the "Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center" (Affiliate of the Smithsonian) Unbelievable what we saw there. Here is the Stealth Bomber hanging next to the Space shuttle...

The Viking 1 Mars rover

Sputnik 1...yes, the real one...

Vanguard 1- Our 1st sattelite...surprises me how small these guys are.

The Moon landing craft...

The moon Rover

The actual suits they wore...

The actual units used in the US-Russian satellite mission The green Russian hooked up to...

the US section

One of the early rockets created by Werner Von braun. There was a whole section showing Hitlers mad rush to make a rocket to destroy the US. From his group, which included Von Braun they came very close, and of course Von Braun joined the US, anxious to help us in our space program.

we thought we had seen the most interesting place in Kansas...but no,,,we headed to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum, also in Hutchinson. This is the only salt mine in the world to allow visitors. Having a bit o claustrofobia, I was not too excited to go 600+ feet under ground!

I was a bit relieved to find they had electricity to light up our tour. Here is a sample of how the salt will turn out after it is processed...most of it going to places to use for roads in cold weather.

This map shwed how the salt laayer was formed (a looooong time ago) A very salty ocean which slowly dried up. As time went by it dried, being saltier than th Dead Sea in Isreal. This layer of salt lies under several states. They sa there is enough to mine for another 2500 years!

Here is a large block. I believe it said it weighs over 600lbs (Lola is not trying to lift it)

This is a good picture of how the main walk was lit up

This is one of the old "Mules" on rails used to take the men to the working area in the early days

They would move some old cars down by tearing them apart to fit in the elevator, then weld them back together and convert the engines to run on vegetable as gasoline is too flammable for the mines. When the vehicle wore out, they just abandon it, strip it of needed parts and let it rust.

Veins like ths showed how moisture pr dirt would leak down and eventually harden.

Hollywood found that by storing their film in the salt mines, they would not deteriorate. Most of their movies and TV shows are stored here, making great use of the already mined area's.

This map shows the area's of storage used now

These are the actual suits worn by the actors in the movies. Somehow I lost the Batman suit.

I seem to have lost several pictures and will see if we can figure out why. From here we went to INMAN Kansas where Nancy's grandfather lived and her dad grew up. We found the church, the graveyard and headstone, but these pics are lost somewhere in the camera. Hopefully we will have them for tomorrow's blog, or we will go back and get more...see you tomorrow.