Kansas’s salt caverns
A visit to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum is “no trip to Disney World,” said Lisa Gutierrez in The Kansas City Star. Before boarding an elevator that takes you 650 feet below Hutchinson, you have to strap a breathing apparatus around your neck to use in case of emergency. But if you survive the claustrophobia-inducing descent, a new world opens up—tall, broad caverns carved into a salt bed that stretches from Kansas to New Mexico. Mining of the 275-million-year-old salt continues just beyond the museum’s limits, but visitors are welcome to grab a chunk when their tram car makes its stops. I opted to join the Dark Ride, highlighted by a moment when the guide flips off the lights to plunge visitors into incredibly disorienting darkness. Yet around the bend waited a more reassuring sight—a Batman costume once worn by George Clooney. Many Hollywood treasures, it turns out, are stored down here in vaults not open to the public.
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