53. Explore Hutchinson

We left for our adventure in beautiful weather in the mid-60s.  Angel was so excited there was green on the ground along the road and wheat growing in the fields.  When we got out of the Cosmosphere on Saturday afternoon, it was cold and overcast.  There would be no outside activities this weekend.  On the drive home, we ran into snow.  Gotta love Kansas weather.  You never know what you are going to get. We did get to explore downtown Hutchinson. 

 We had tons of fun exploring a pawn shop, the Salvation Army, and a music store.  Angel was so excited to get to look through piano books.  We also got to see the famous Avenue A painting and our daughter won herself a rabbit in a claw machine at Spangles.

The animal from the claw machine

Part of our Salt Adventure was getting to see the original mine where they found the salt.  It is miles away from the museum so we were stunned to think about just how much salt that means is under the city.

The weather led to the kids favorite part of the adventure.  We had to stay inside so we got to swim and order pizza for the hotel and watch Back to the Future trilogy on abc family.  The kids called it our hotel party and it was a definite highlight of the trip. 

The hotel was not Eric and Angel's favorite part of the trip...not the "quality" the name implies.  Angel was given the "wheelchair room," but she would not call it accessible.  There were very shaky handles on the toilet itself instead of a bar on the wall.  It's a good thing Angel has long arms so she could use the grab bar on the bathtub to help her transfer.  It was such a scary situation that one time she decided she would use the clearly marked handicap public restrooms beside the breakfast room.  Well, they are not handicap accessible at all.  There is no bar in the restroom.  The telephone was on the opposite side of the bed, which was easily remedied by moving the phone.  The fridge was unusable because it opened the wrong direction for a wheelchair user.  The hotel staff did move some unnecessary furniture out of the room so Angel could move around.  We're not sure if the front desk fully understood the difficulties when Angel tried to express them, or just did not care. Anyway, it was not the highlight of the trip for Angel.  Maybe hotel chains should give Angel mileage and a free hotel night stay and she could help them know what really constitutes accessibility and help with furniture arrangement, etc.