Hutchinson, KS

Today I had to pull rank on Chris. The plan was for him to ride 85-110 miles and for us to meet up with him in a tiny town tonight. When I looked up things to do on our route today though, I didn't think we should miss out on what I found. August and I would be driving through Hutchinson, the home of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. Chris had heard about it before we came, but didn't realize where it was exactly. Anyway, I really wanted to go so I politely asked (told) Chris we should change the plan.

Of course, he had already ridden 50 miles at this point, but I convinced him to turn off and come meet us at the Cosmosphere. We were both glad we worked it in. The museum has a fairly comprehensive overview of the history of space travel, starting with the rockets built by both sides during World War II as part of the mission of both sides to defeat the opposing forces.

One fact I didn't know before was that one of the primary reasons the U.S. was able to leap to the front of the space race was that when the spoils of WWII were being divided among Allied countries, America got Germany's rocket scientists. In true American genius fashion, we borrowed some high expertise from a group that had already done much of the groundwork.

My favorite parts were definitely all of the actual items from real space missions. In particular, I thought it was awesome that the Odyssey module from Apollo 13 is there. And it's not like it was just shipped to Kansas after it returned. There were over 80,000 individual parts on it, and as is typical after any mission, most of them were sent back to the manufacturers and other parties to be inspected, evaluated, and studied for future improvements. So, when the group decided to restore the module for display, dedicated scientists had to reach out to all of them to try to get the parts back. In addition, many of the parts from space shuttles are reused on future missions, which presented even more red tape in getting all of them back. They worked long and hard though, and it was awe-inspiring to stand in front of it. Next to it was Jim Lovell's spacesuit as well. Those were just a couple of the interesting displays at the Cosmosphere.

Then, because I hadn't had enough of museums for the day, I really wanted to go to the Strataca, an underground salt mining museum here. Kansas is the location of one of the world's largest deposits of rock salt, and the museum is located within a working salt mining company. I like underground museums, especially ones with little trains you can ride around. So, I was pumped to find this one. It was cool seeing all the stratified layers of salt, salt blocks and old equipment. It was too dark for me to get any good pictures of the mine walls.

Also interesting to me was learning that the atmosphere down there makes it conducive to storing important documents and artifacts. In fact, Hollywood studios sometimes send costumes and other items from movies to salt mines for preservation.

Racing suits from the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

As if being in Kansas wasn't already making me want to watch Twister, Dorothy II was on display in the mine as well.





Afterwards, we decided to splurge on a hotel to finish off Father's Day in relative luxury. A night out of the RV occasionally gives us all a lift, and is a nice change of pace. We walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner and went for a swim before bedtime for Auggie and catching up on laundry tonight for us.


I hope Chris enjoyed his Father's Day. In honor of him, a picture of August yesterday doing a hardcore tune-up on his tricycle. A few days ago you saw him dragging the tool box over to it. He has now graduated to sitting on a bucket or tool box with a screwdriver and getting down to business. It is absolutely adorable, and a testament to how much Chris includes him in whatever his man project of the day is. He wants to be just like him, and I'm grateful that he has such a stellar example to follow.