Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum

February 8, 2020

Part of the appeal of driving down the US was to stop in to the Barber Motorsports Park on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. Developed by a successful mid-west dairyman George Barber, it features a professional racetrack and museum containing more than 1,600 vintage and modern motorcycles and racing cars. It is considered the largest motorcycle museum in the world with 900 bikes on display dating from 1904 to present. The museum is amazing, Barber was influenced by his visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao and it certainly shows.

We started with a hotel breakfast and got to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum early in the morning, we nearly had the place to ourselves. The girls were good sports and got excited about some of the more interesting motorcycles, sidecars, and early racers. I’ll post a more comprehensive set of photos on my motorcycle site.

After floors and floors of bikes (even I got saturated!) we headed out to the track to get some fresh air. There was some activity on the race track, I think a Porsche driver race training. Emma was the hero of the hour finding the lost camera filter that we only noticed was missing while heading to the car.

We hit the road and stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner, um… somewhere in Alabama. Headed due west for Atlanta we were treated to a full moon. We arrived in Atlanta at dusk and stayed in a fun suburban home-swap run by two very nice guys. They warned me about wandering around the neighbourhood, but I headed over to the local mall and grabbed some groceries without incident. I think they thought I was some hayseed from rural Manitoba!? The rooms were kitted out with all sorts of Google voice activated stuff that the girls delighted in operating (dimming the closet lights).