The Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Museum

I had good memories of the stop I made enroute to the National BMW Owners Rally in West Bend, WI last year at the National Motorcycle Museum. At the time I remember thinking to myself that the title seemed a bit pretentious for something stuck out in the middle of Iowa. LINK to posting.

That had been my first and only motorcycle-specific museum and it had a wealth of motorcycles of times past, including a bunch of beemers. I was hoping the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Museum would have a copy of the R90S airhead so I could closely examine how the S fairing is mounted to see if I could do it. Lets just say the National Museum had a greater selection of brands and number of motorcycles.

I left the house shortly after 0900 hrs and 65 miles and about an hour later I was at the Museum which is located off the Nevada Street exit off the I-25 superslab in Colorado Springs. The place was tiny! The Pikes Peak Harley-Davidson dealer and the museum share the same parking lot so use it as a landmark.


The place runs by the efforts of unpaid volunteers and donations. It's really a small building where motorcycles of such brands as Vincent, Excelsior, Indian, Yamaha, Honda are crammed in with a majority of old Harley Davidson Motorcycles. The only beemer I found in the place was this one, a cruiser:

A R1200C Beemer, the only one in the joint, and it was a model

The museum is small so getting good camera angles was difficult at best, most of the motorcycles are behind glass panels which precluded flash for the most part. So a lot of my pictures turned out too blurry to use due to my body moving while pressing the shutter in most cases. Alot had reflections from the light coming in off the parking lot, so conditions weren't great for camera work.

So I apologize for the quality of the pictures, the ones below are the ones that came out best under the above limiting conditions.

Interesting how the HD logo has changed over the years

While small and cramped, its a worthwhile visit if you're a Harley-Davidson fan, the place is crawling with them. There's photographs on the walls of famed riders apparently but since I am not a motorcycle racing fan, it did not register on my personal interest level.

Did I mention the museum is small? Still, a great effort by volunteers given the constraint of resources they work under.

Going out of the museum, what had been a warm morning had turned into a hot morning. It was in the high 80s to mid 90s the rest of the time I was out riding. I watered up and took the I-25 Superslab to the CO105 exit at Monument. I took CO105 all the way to Wolfenberger Rd which led me to Castle Rock and Founder's Parkway. From there it was a short hop to Crowfoot Parkway, the town of Parker and then since it was so sweltering hot I used the E-470 Superslab to get me home quicker.

Almost 135 sweltering miles under the fierce Colorado sun, I need to start remembering to take my camelback full of ice water from now on. I probably should have found a place to stop and soak my cooling vest but I just wanted to get home.