Kansas Underground Salt Museum

Hutchinson is known for its huge salt mine, which actually runs under the city. We did not have time two years ago to check it out, so we decided to do it Friday, before a lot of our friends were pulling in on Saturday.

When we arrived we saw this beautiful locomotive, which always remains me of my dad, who worked for the train company in Germany pretty much all of his life.

We went into the building to realize that the museum and the whole tour is actually 650' underground in the salt mine itself. We got our hardhat and a rebreather in case something would happen. In their whole history of being open since the 1920s, there had not been an accident, so we were pretty much at ease. However, the dark elevator going down 650' to the mine itself was not to my liking.

Arriving down there was pretty amazing. It is a comfortable 68 degrees all the time and a steady humidity.
The walking tour was pretty interesting. Since the shaft is so narrow, some of the equipment and cars that they use to get around in this vast tunnel system are just left behind, since it is to difficult to bring them back up to the surface.



Look at this awesome looking rock formations.

Saturday rolled around and right before lunch time the rigs started rolling in. I just love watching them come in, there is a lot of hugging the people we have not seen for the last six months and everybody just has a really good time, helping each other parking the rigs. We belong to a pretty neat group here!!!! And this year our big truck will be in the main picture!! I am so excited about this. We are expecting 40 rigs and here are pictures of a few of those.



Can you spot us in any of these pictures?