8-3-08 Day 37 Milwaukee to South Bend, IN and the HD Museum

Got out of the hotel about 8 am and went to wash the bikes because the HD museum doesn’t open until 9. Got to the museum a little after 9. Of course motorcycles get to park front and center so we are early enough to park near the door. It’s also Sturgis time so I think that helped to keep the crowd down. The building just opened 3 weeks ago on July 12. It’s 130,000 square feet on 2 floors, so think about it as equal to a typical Home Depot or Lowes in size. They used all galvanized exposed steel for the frame of the building to signify the frame of a bike holding it’s components. They also suspended the second floor from the roof so that they didn’t have to deal with columns getting in the way for setting up displays on the ground floor! It’s on a 20 acre site in downtown Milwaukee along a river which is where one of the restaurants and the bar are facing along with outdoor seating. They also have a river walk as part of the Milwaukee renaissance. In addition to the museum there are 2 other buildings. One is the archives from which they pull the artifacts kept in storage for the exhibits and the other is the restaurants, bar and of course museum store for Harley memorabilia and clothing! It’s quite a story of how the company has evolved over the last 105 years. Admission is $16 and I highly recommend the extra $5 for the self guided MP3 player. We spent over 6 hours there (could of spent more time but you get to the point of overload) which included a quick lunch. A large portion of the bikes are unrestored with almost no miles on them which was surprising. The founders had the foresight to put aside many bikes they built as well as the engineering work and some extra parts as well. These bikes are not pristine as they obviously were not stored carefully as they have scratches and dents but they are complete and original. I've attached a few pics. The first is the outside of the bldg., the next 2 are what they call bike #1 and the last is a shot of the group of bikes from 1906 to 1948. This is all upstairs along with the engine room and a room about racing. The main floor has bikes from 1950 to present, an area about the AMF years and how the company was bought back, an area about R & D and some bikes like Evil Knevils jump bike, replica bikes from the Easy Rider movie along with a few odd bikes people have personally customized. We left about 3:30 and wanted to get east of Chicago so we didn't have to deal with Monday rush hour traffic. Well it didn't matter much as due to construction and half the lanes being closed we had traffic anyway but I'm sure it was less then tomorrow mornings rush hour. We made it to South Bend, IN at what we thought was 8pm but found out we just crossed another time zone and it was 9pm. We decided to skip dinner as it was to late to eat and had a couple Fig Newtons instead. We are thinking of swinging up through Cleveland tomorrow to check out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame before our final push home.