In Anamosa Iowa, which is about 15 miles northeast of Cedar Rapids, there exists the National Motorcycle Musem. From what I hear, it used to be in Sturgis, but they packed the whole thing up and moved it to Anamosa. Anamosa is a nice little town where they've recently redid the whole downtown and put in old-style lightposts, big planters for plants, very nice sidewalks, benches all over, etc. It's a very motorcycle friendly town. There are lots of small nice bars catering to motorcyclists (ok, mostly Harley riders) and lots of little 'shoppes' (what I call a place I wouldn't be caught dead in, but my wife loves). It's just a pleasant little town that the whole family can enjoy.

There's also a limestone mine near, so lots of the local houses are made partially or completely out of limestone. There's even a big prison right there in town that's completely made of limestone. It was built in the late 1800's and looks like something out of a Steven King movie, very spooky looking and worth driving by. It's about 6 blocks from the museum, right off the main drag. You can even go to the limestone mine just outside of town, and just past it is a whole big neighborhood of really old, big houses made out of the limestone, nestled in the hills around the mine, very cool place.

Anyway, the museum is on 2 floors, the ground floor and the basement, both are very large. If you like motocycles and the history of them, you will LOVE this place. It's go SO MUCH stuff, I can't even describe it. It would be about a five hour drive from Decatur, well worth it, trust me. So here's some pictures, hopefully, they will get you fired up to go, I really enjoyed it and I hope you like the pictures.

Note: look not just at the bike in the picture, but the stuff in the background to get an idea of the detail in this place.

The outside of the museum, barely visible past my fat ass on a minibike



Some of MANY bikes in there, these are Ducatis



One of Evel Kneivel's bikes



They have a whole room devoted to board tracking racing.
This used to be very popular (around the 1920's), till some bikes flew into the stands
and killed some spectators, that pretty much killed it.


A nice old Norton



They have a room devoted to old dirt bikes, this is a Bultaco



A Greeves (paint is NOT stock)



They have an ENTIRE old Harley shop,
complete with old, real parts in the original boxes, etc



My son Kyle checking out a cool hillclimb statue.
Check out all the stuff on the walls, the whole place is like that.



Another angle hillclimb statue, his hand is there for scale.



1930 Brough Superior, not many of these around



1971 Husqvarna



The bike that started the Japanes invasion, a 1963 Honda Dream.
Ad slogan: "You meet the nicest people on a Honda"



The "Captain America" bike
from the classic movie "Easy Rider", Peter Fonda rode it



1976 Honda XL350
Look how CLEAN this bike is. They're all like that



A whole case of bike related awards etc
There are TONS of this stuff



A 75h Anniversary "Sturgis" Harley
Man, this thing is UGLY



1914 Yale



For the Harley rider that has everything
Note saddlebags, fringe, pegs, etc



Triumph hillclimber



Flying Merkel's bike, a famouse racer back in the day



Hope you liked it!