Hays KS to Coffeyville KS - Motorcycle Museums

Yes I am still in Kansas, but I have 2 good excuses.
There was a big storm system east of me and instead of runing up the backside of it, I decided to go south and try to weave under it (almost worked). I was seeking, and found, small Kansas towns. It was more humid and got hotter than yesterday so the morning was ok, but by noon, the air was really thick. Just before Great Bend, I say a little brown sign that said "Motorcycle Museum) and the arrow pointed up a small county road to the left. So I figured, what the heck, might be kinda cute. It was about 14 miles and I came into the town of Marquette, KS. I completely missed the museum, it was right on Main Street (pretty much the only street), of Marquette which is a small quiet town with one of most everything (did not see a hardware or grocery store). The guy inside had just retired (la-la-la retirement is awesome la-la-la) but knew a ton about all the bikes in the museum. It was basically 2 large joined room and maybe 120 motorcycles. Lots of early 1900 "motorized bicycles", lots of Harley's, Indian's and Henderson's, and lots of "classic" 1950,60,70s bikes. I saya couple I have owned (Suzuki  cylinder 2 stroke and Triumph 650). I love these early bikes because they are loaded with Mechanical Engineering experimentation, back when they were building things, watching them break, and then building the next generation. The museum is the bikes left over from a guy from the town who raced motorcycles from 1942 until the 1990's. He collected a few bikes and a lot of people loaned their restored bikes to the museum. Well worth the stop.

I left the museum and half way down the county road, back to Rt 56, it went from drips to dribbles to drizzle, so I stopped to put on the rain gear. I just got my florescent gear on when an old guy in a rusty pickup stopped to check that I was ok. These mid-westerners do watch out for each other.
The guy at the Marquette museum said I should drive teh 2 hrs to Augusta KS museum which had even more restored bikes. I did and they did. A little smaller than the first museum, but equally impressive collection. He said the owner had just left to run in the annual Cannonball Race where they race from coast to coast. This year, the motorcycles have to be at least 100 years old. They actually start on Saturday from Atlantic City, NJ. I  checked the route and we may be able to catch them when the go through Ohio. How cool (and smoky I bet) would that be. He said there were 150-200 old bikes going from NJ to San Diego. My but hurts just thinking about it, those tiny seats.

The rain stopped and the second museum guy sent me on some nice quite roads to end in Joplin Missouri, but when I pulled into Coffeyville KS, a wall of black clouds and big lightning and thunder was between me and where I was supposed to go, so I stopped for the night. Sure enough it poured as soon as I got into the room.
I unpacked and called my brother to see how they were doing, heading west to meet me. They had just gotten to Maggie Valley, NC and so we are still almost 1000 miles apart. So maybe a couple more days until we meet up.

The rain stopped so I walked a few blocks to a BBQ place and chatted up another traveller who turned out to be a computer guy (IT) and we swapped stories about the good old days of S100, CPM, the original IBM-PC, etc. He was a few years younger but we both lived and worked through all the same technology changes. Nerd on vacation..
So tomorrow I head to Missouri. I'll add more pics of those beautiful bikes I saw today.