Mid-South Kansas: Salt of the Earth

The last charming stops of our 2024 trip were in Kansas. Kansas gets a bad rap as being flat (always true) and boring (not always true), and besides being the geographical center of the country, it’s a state of farmlands and salt-of-the-earth Midwesterners. We’re always surprised to find little hidden treasures in Kansas!

Strataca Salt Mine (Hutchinson, KS)

Underneath all that flat land, something extraordinary is happening. In Hutchinson, there’s an active salt mine! You might think, “how much salt could this country really need?” but when you factor in salt being used in livestock feed and salt being thrown on winter icy roads, it’s a lot!

The Strataca Underground Salt Museum is all about what it takes to bring salt to the surface. To find out, you ride in a rattly, rusty, pitch-black, maybe-too-authentic elevator shaft, 650 feet underground.

Besides a lot of displays and multi-media presentations about mine operations, a tram ride also takes you through former work areas showing the dangers and challenges salt miners face.

Even more interesting that what comes OUT of Strataca is what goes INTO Strataca — which is: movie memorabilia, tape feels, movie masters, and more! That’s right, a percentage of this underground mine is leased to major motion pictures studios who store their stuff safely here in perfect climate-control conditions. Plus, who would think to look down here for Superman’s original cape or Dorothy II from Twister, or the reel of that episode of Seinfeld where George is told “No soup for you!”

At the end of it all, you get to fill a bag with chunks for salt to do who-knows-what with when you get home, but you woulda thought everyone was digging for rare gems or diamonds, with the effort they put into it. Philip may or may not have shoved a little old lady and a small boy aside to get the best chunk.

And with that, you are reminded that: “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” Too true!

Political Art of M.T. Liggett (Mullinville, KS)

Our RV’er friends Paul and Amanda told us about this crazy collection of salty political art, stretching a quarter mile with three deep sculptures, in the middle of nowhere’s-ville Kansas.

You’d have to really study these sculptures and know a lot of backstories to grasp some of the meanings, but suffice to say that M.T. Liggett didn’t like very many people, particularly local politicians, and he sure wanted everyone to know it.

Hilary Clinton with a Nazi swastika body, anyone? Princess Diana with pubic hair? He definitely didn’t care who he offended.

Others are simply cute or hilarious, and many of them flap in the wind, which it definitely was on the day we visited. Some are based on ex-girlfriends, which they probably didn’t know would happen when they started dating him.

Some are 20 feet tall, and now that Liggett has passed in 2017, many are faded, but still they wait for visitors to come and admire them.

And of course this one is my favorite! 🙂

To learn the whole story about this salt-of-the-Earth Kansan (Kansas’en?), read this! It’s a pretty fascinating story! There’s even a link to a 2002 video about this “Cranky Outsider Artist.” https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11212

Dorothy’s House and the Land of Oz (Liberal, KS)

You can’t visit Kansas and get away without a Wizard of Oz reference. The town of Liberal takes it to a whole new level. Here, they have commandeered a local resident’s 1907 family home and outfitted it to look like Dorothy’s.

They hire adorable schoolgirls to dress as Dorothy and lead tours down the yellow brick road, never once breaking character, no matter how hard Philip tried to trip her up.

We have a personal connection to this place, as our friend Brian’s family donated the house that became this place — his dad grew up in it, and there are still marks on the kitchen door frame showing Brian and the other kids growing taller each year.

The house comes complete with approaching tornado. Having squatted through two near-miss tornado warning on this trip, we have a certain amount of PTSD about this topic.

Besides the house, visitors are taken through the Land of Oz, a 5,000 square foot exhibit that basically presents the high points of the movie acted out by Dorothy in about 20 minutes inside a warehouse. The children on the tour were agog with delight, and the adults couldn’t stop smiling at their delight.

Was some of the setup cheesey and even at-times, creepy? Yes. Yes, they were. Did we have a great hour-long time anyway? Yes. Yes, we did.

Home Again Home Again Jiggedy Jig

Dorothy leads us right into our final reference, which is of course that there is “no place like home,” especially when three cutie grandkids are waiting for us. (The youngest is crying because we took away his Cheez-Its to take the photo.)

As we headed through Arizona, we stopped in Northern Arizona to visit my parents, who escape hot Phoenix summers in Flagstaff’s cool pines. They live in our home neighborhood so we will see them again in October when they move back.

This trip had the highest of highs, as we completed the map of now having RV’ed in all of the lower 48 states; but the “salt in the wound” was having to let our longtime adventure companion, Sprinkles, go to the rainbow bridge while on the road.

We also reveled in many of our bucket list destinations, like Gettysburg National Military Park, the Bourbon Trail of Kentucky, Sunday brunch at Churchill Downs, and another four National Parks for our poster wall at home.

With a Europe river cruise on tap for this fall, we won’t have another long RV trip until 2025, at which time we will likely delve deeper into the Deep South states. As per usual, we are working on those plans now — a year or so in advance.

Until then, thank you for coming along on our Charming RV Adventures! If you like our blog, please tell a friend!