H-D Museum & The Iron Horse Hotel

An hour plus tour of the H-D Museum (http://www.h-dmuseum.com/) plenty, they have over 400 bikes and all of the artifacts of any good museum. What is really amazing is that The Motor Company (as they call themselves) was able to put away bikes as they were manufactured and get people to donate some of the more significant ones in their 106 year history. Probably the best room in the museum was the engine room. You can go into this room and "start" any engine that Harley ever built and get to hear the sound that it makes. Cool technology to make this happen.



Bike Night was just starting as we were leaving the museum, it was interesting to see where some other people were from. The farthest distance I saw was Maine. My guess, based on the amount of gear on the bikes was that other people were making the "pilgrimage" to H-D before going to Sturgis as well.

H-D Museum

Gotta like this sign at the H-D Museum

Can you imagine actually riding this bike?

After finishing up at the museum , we headed over to The Iron Horse Hotel (http://www.theironhorsehotel.com/) for Bike Night in the Yard. The Iron Horse just opened in Sept. 2008 and they added the The Yard in the spring of 2009. It's a 100 room loft style hotel that was a factory. They must have spent multi-millions in renovating this place, it kicks ass. Probably the coolest is that it's biker friendly and they have parking under cover at the front of the hotel. The Yard has both tables and outdoor couches where people were hanging out and have a few cocktails.

The Yard is under the canopy at the Iron Horse Hotel

We jumped back on the road and headed towards Rochester, MN and the Auburn Woods RV resort. After having to find our own space and get hooked up, we finally called it a day at around 11:30 p.m. CST. It was a long first day, but well worth the trip. Looking forward to tomorrow.