Day 32 - Mushroom Rock, Hutchinson & Wichita, KS

Our plan today was to head towards Wichita going via Mushroom Rock State Park and Hutchinson.

I had read about Mushroom State Park in one of our Best Road Trips of America guides. It is the smallest state park in Kansas at just 5 acres in size. Lee wasn't very keen to stop off at this park as he had read somewhere online that it was just two mushroom shaped rocks that you view from your car, he also wasn't overly happy when he saw the single track dirt road we needed to go down to reach it, memories of the Smoky Mountains came back! But we were both glad we made the short detour. Whilst the park is small, it was empty. One of the mushrooms was close to the car park but the second one was a short walk away over a pretty bridge and into a prairie. It was worth the stop!

Next stop was the town of Huchinson. The drive took us through a lot of farmland, small farming towns, huge cooperative grain stores and lots of railway lines (we assume to move the grain around the country).

I'm sure we will be writing about this in the future as we move into Texas but over the last few days, we have seen fields full of Nodding Donkeys (or Pumpjacks). For people who live in this area, its probably nothing very special but for Lee and I, this is the first time we've seen this working in real life to pump oil out of the fields and to see so many of them as really impressive.

There were two recommendations for attractions to see in Hutchinson. We planned to only do one but they were both so awesome, we ended up doing both!

The first one we did was the Cosmosphere. Lee is a huge fan of all things space, owning two telescopes (which rarely get any use in the UK!). We really didn't think that this small city in Kansas state would compare to the Kennedy Space Center which we saw 8 years ago when we were in Florida for our engagement but it did. We were both really tempted to say it was better the the Kennedy Space Center but it really needed a full day or several days to take in all the information, exhibits, films and activities. We only walked around the museum which unlike other space museums we have been to, starting telling the story of space travel from Hilter's rule, through the cold war, to the Apollo programme, the Shuttles and then finally to what the future could hold. What was most impressive about this place was the amount of memorabilia they had collected and a lot of it was very unique. For example, they had WW2 rockets, parts of the Berlin wall, the Apollo 13 capsule, an entire SR71, replica lunar lander and moon buggy and lots of astronaut equipment including a toilet! We had a huge amount of fun but it was information overload.

The next attraction was the Strataca underground salt mines. We hadn't realised until we visited that Hutchinson is the salt capital of America. It has been home to salt mines since 1887 and is nicknamed of "Salt City". Strataca is the only working salt mine you can visit in the US, it is mined by the Hutchinson Salt Company and over 500,000 ton of rock salt is removed each year to be used on the roads in winter or in animal feed. The tour takes you down 650 feet to an area that was mined in the 30s, 40s and 50s. In the mine is a museum that tells the story of the mine and the difference in salt mining over the years, a ride on a train on the original tracks they used to move the salt out of the mine and a ride in the dark on a tram. Parts of the mine that are not used any longer for mining are now used for storing documents, media and artifacts, including movies and pictures from Disney and Hollywood movies. Apparently the constant temperature and humidity makes it the perfect locations for keeping these items safe and in their original form. We were also allowed to choose our own piece of salt to take with us after the tour. You can't eat it or do anything with it really, its just a decoration and will hopefully make it through the remaining 5 months and come back with us to the UK.

Here is our film of these two attractions:

We left Huchinson and headed to our final destination for the day, Wichita. We stayed in a lovely hotel in Old Town called Hotel at Old Town which was a fantastic location for reaching some local bars and restaurants but we also had a suite with a huge hot tub.

We really enjoyed the Pump House which is a converted Gas Station where we had Southwest Egg Rolls (chicken, corn, cheese, spinach and herbs rolled in tortillas and fried) and a Beer, Pig and Cheese pizza (garlic, cream cheese, beer onions, bacon and mozzarella on a pizza), the bar opposite our hotel call the River City Brewing Company where we sat on the balcony watching the world go by and Morts: a cigar and martini bar where there were hundreds of different martinis on the menu, I only managed to try a few.

Old Town in Wichita is an old industrial area that has been converted into trendy bars, restaurants, hotels and shops. We're noticing this has happened in a number of cities we have visited, the downtown areas are business-focused and for tourists there isn't a huge amount going on, especially if you visit at a weekend but the old industrial areas are where it's now happening.