Our Soldiers Have Made It Home--161st Field Artillery, Kansas

Welcome home and thank you National Guard 161st Field Artillery!

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Battalion Coming Home From Iraq

We have our Army battalion coming home from Iraq tomorrow Oct 18th arriving at Century II in Wichita, Kansas. Dan has to go over there to get things ready for the homecoming. I'm going to tag along to help and welcome our soldiers home.
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How To Clam Fish In Kansas! LOL

Dan, my son Nathan and I went fishing Sunday Dan caught a clam. Here is a video on how to clam fish in Kansas, its hard to hear because it was very windy, go figure huh? It's pretty funny. Wish I was as witty as Dan

650' Down Under The Kansas Prairie

After one of Marsh's older brothers went on a hot air ballon ride. We accepted this as a callenge to get off our butts and do something strange too.
The center of Kansas use to be a shallow ocean. like 230-250 million years ago. We are old enough to remember the the muddy condition when it finally dried up, (took about two years). LOL
The salt deposit which was left, (like daytona) is where the good USA gets most of its table salt and of course the road salt for winter.

Marsh and I decided we would take the SALT PLANT TOUR. Cost? A mere $13.50 each. For all that we got trip 650 feet down into the earth. (a little like the distance the St. Louis arch is tall) in a pitch black elevator. Which didnt look like 4 million dollars. (and maintained like a redneck garage beer icebox).

The little electric trolly cars were cool, and each had a speaker system so we could really hear the tour guide talk. Really is quite a lot to salt mines. The tunnels total 67 miles but we stayed within about 1,000 yds from the eleivtor.

The most interesting part for me was the use of the mine as sort of a national treasure warehouse. The conditions in the mine are perfect for peserving paper and really about all other stuff such as origional major motion picture reels. I read a newpaper the day after Lincoln's death, and it looked like it was just printed! Being a history major I was thrilled to see the accounts of persons involved and astonished the the addiontional information about the other attempts of key figures that night. So much of history is lost.

Other points of facts we can now say we saw are. The batman movie MR Freeze costume worn by Arnie, Presly's shirt, that little pistol that Will Smith was given in from "Men in BLack" and a manniquin of Mr. smith from the Matrix. The gift shop of , if not the deepest on earth (650 feet down) was really neat, loved the t-shirts, "I survived the shaft', "I ve been where the sun really dont shine", just love stuff like that.
In closing I would just like to say that it was well worth the money, had a great time and would recommend it!
-dan-
The elevator down was not too fun, I don't really like enclosed spaces and Dan and I were back into the corner. eeekk! Center pic was in the elevator I was holding the camera above me and got a pic in the pitch dark. Note the tour guide in the blue shirt! He was a pretty funny tour guide. One plus on being 650 underground was no tornados down there!! :)
-marsh-

Kansas Underground Salt Museum, located in Hutchinson, Kansas

Our Sunday Drive

Sunday Dan wanted to do something(his only day off). He wanted to take me to Kechi Kansas. He said there was all kinds of antique shops, mind you he hadn't been there for years. Myself, I have never been to this small town in Kansas near Wichita.
We get there and and there was 1 or 2 shops and they were closed. There was this pretty building but we only saw one car. It was full of glass figures. I saw the sign and it was indeed open. It is called KARG ART GLASS and is a gallery full or his and other artists' work!! Oh my I was drooling at the beauty of the work. The lady there gave us a CD on the operations of glass blowing. Very, very interesting.
Please click on the text link and check out the beauty of glass art.

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How Ironic

Dear hubby and I have recently moved. He got a better job. We had to move because the new job was 55 miles away from where we lived. Now we live 3 minutes by car from his job. Formerly we were driving 2 cars to work, a total of 140 miles a day.
The ironic thing is that we moved(remember I don't have a liking for tornados) to Hesston, Ks this is where the big F5 tornado hit in 1990. Eeeekkkk! Here is a video from this tornado.

Title should be Marsh in Oz

The reason I should say this blog should be "Marsh in Oz" is because I really think that fate is what brought me here to Kansas.
When I was very young living on a farm in Woodstock Illinios I dreamt of tornados constantly. These tornados never touched down in my dreams. Later on in years these dreams still occured quite frequently.
Finally as an adult I landed in a bad marriage, blah, blah which brought me here to Kansas in July of 1990. Wow, I saw my real tornado about 8 months of moving here! It was so unreal, people weren't taking cover or anything. I thought these people were nuts! My four children were all taking cover! I had the fear there but then yet it wasn't.
Years went by, and oh yes there were tornado warnings in our county all the time. I bought my first home in 1997 in another county still tornados around but yet never any tornados in my town. One night a few years later I had a dream and this tornado touched down!! First time(remember all other dreams they never touched down) one has touched down in my dream. There was like houses and the tornado scurried through but did not hurt the houses. Guess what, here it is 9 years later and I still haven't dreamt of a tornados.
This is why I feel living in Kansas is my fate. My dreams were telling me I was going to live someday where there are alot of tornados, Kansas. Maybe 9 years ago I felt contend enough here to have that last dream. Guess what I still haven't found the yellow brick road, actually I still haven't seen Dorothy or ToTo.
Yes Kansas is my home now.
More about me and my life in Kansas later.