Underground Salt Museum - Dark Walk

                          

Hutchinson has one of the Wonders of Kansas exhibits in the Underground Salt Museum - 650' under the earths surface, deeper than the St. Louis Arch is tall, and a really cool place to visit.  Definitely worth the trip.  The pictures I am showing here are things that I found interesting while on a recent "Dark Walk" in the museum where we were given a tour of a newer section of the museum that is not ordinarily part of the regular tour by flashlight.  Regardless, I have been on both tours now and can say I enjoyed them both.   The picture of the truck above was actually taken on the regular tour and is one of my prints that I have been displaying in the Salt City Photography Clubs recent public displays.  I included it in this entry because I like it and it is part of the musuem....oh and its my blog :)   (Dislaimer:  This is not intended on being a representation of what the museum is or is not.  It is simply my journey though the museum as I experienced it while capturing what I found was interesting.  There is so much to see in this wonderful museum that I did not take pictures of including movie memorabilia, artifacts, giant equipment, etc etc).

----more pictures after the jump----

 This is a giant boulder of salt.  About 4 feet tall and 8 feet wide (I approximate).  All I know is it was a chunk.

This picture is what it looks like after you have gotten on the tram and are entering the main part of the tour.

This is what the majority of the walls are made up of.  I really liked how the ambient light from the flashlights reflected of the surface. 

There are a lot of artifacts that have been left over from the miners over the years.  These are some of the things that have been found.  While these items might be overlooked as trash they are artifacts of the mine and have been down here for years.  One thing that will be noticed is that anything metal in the mines rusts.  Salt of course is very corrosive.

Part of a large piece of equipment I was interested in the smaller details of the corrosion on the chain.  I don't know I thought it looked cool.  

                                            

This is a picture of the ceiling of the mine that I thought had a lot of interesting texture.   The last picture I will add was part of a giant pile of wooden crates that at one time housed dynamite.  Guess I thought it was funny though the picture doesn't do it justice in terms of the scale of the pile.