Way back in July...

...we took a vacation out to Colorado so we could attend my cousin's wedding.  Before we went to her wedding, however, we stopped in Kansas (so N2 could cross Kansas off their list) and did some more things in Colorado.  In Hutchinson, Kansas, we toured Strataca, a salt mine museum that is used to store historic documents, memorabilia and important documents.  There is only one way in and out of the salt mine museum (and the archives) and that is down an elevator.  The elevator ride was quite interesting because it is a double-decker elevator and there are no lights.  They pack you in pretty tight.  Luckily we were in the second batch that loaded on the elevator so we were the second on and the first off :)  They do have a push on light (I can't think of the name of those lights) which they turned on for a little bit after the door closed and on our way back because the person who brought us back up asked what our kids would prefer.

Once we got down to the mine, they let you explore the museum part of it on your own.  The part that we could tour was not an active salt mine any longer but there is a company that mines salt farther away (the mine is huge!)  Historically, everything that was brought down in the mine was not brought back out so there are a lot of old machines down there (plus lots of trash).  They also had to build all the machines down in the mine because the elevator shaft was too small to take large machines down.

 As I said above, they didn't take trash out of the mine.  This trash has been around for over 50 years.  There is no moisture in the mine so the trash doesn't decay.

We took two different train/tram rides.  On one of them, we were able to take salt from a pile of salt.  We could choose a piece no larger then our palm or a bag of small pieces.  Noah chose to take a bag while the rest of us took larger pieces.  We actually can't figure out what to do with the rocks because we can't put them in the garden!

As we were driving from Kansas and Colorado we passed by a couple places that make the large wind turbines.  There were fields and fields of propeller pieces.  It is amazing to see just how huge they are!

Not too far into Colorado, we  happened to look back and noticed one of the most vibrant rainbows I have ever seen and one of the largest ones I have seen (probably because there wasn't much to block the view!)  It was a double rainbow as well.  We pulled over on the road along with almost everyone else to take a few pictures.