Hutchinson Salt Museum

Labor Day Weekend was a weekend of "firsts" for us. My mom, sister and her kids came for a visit and we took them to the Hutchinson Salt Museum for a day of fun. This has been on my To Do list since we moved to Wichita and we were happy to be able to cross this off the list with such good company.
The museum is all underground in a previously mined section of the salt beds.

After climbing into the elevator and traveling 650 into the earth

we emerged into this massive corridor with many interesting exhibits on the history of salt mining. The kids really enjoyed the hands-on exhibits like this one on the three by products of salt mining. This stuff is better than Moon Sand!

I took many, MANY pictures and I won't make you look at all of them, but one of the activities was a train ride around the various parts of the mine.

Here some of us are ready for our trip... with 9 people in our party it was hard to sit together.
But for some reason, my teenage nephew really enjoyed sitting next to me! I'm sure it's not because I'm so crazy silly that I keep him in stitches with my witty humor. I think it was because I was the lesser of the "evils" at the time. Sit next to his brother or me? Hmmm. Tough choice. I tried my best to make him regret his decision. : )
One of the other tours we took was the Dark Ride on a tram. Along the way they stopped and let us "mine" for our own salt rock souvenirs.

What a super fun way to spend the afternoon. I highly recommend it if you find yourself in the area.