I’m guessing that many of you have seen plenty of attraction lists filled with places that you’ve already seen, are no longer open, are too far away, are by appointment only, or are so distorted by AI as to be laughable. I know I have. But I recently came across a list of museums in Ohio with several entries I thought useful. Every place on the list is currently operating, and I detected not a whiff of AI. I’d already visited several, and a few were too far away to fit my immediate plans, but that’s my problem. One requires an appointment, and my reluctance to do that is a personal problem, too. The list came from Ever After in the Woods. This is my first time hearing of them, so I’m not ready to give a wholehearted recommendation, but I like what I’ve seen so far.
As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, my first selection from the list was the Honda Heritage Center in Marysville, OH. It’s roughly two hours away, open at reasonable hours Monday through Friday, and free. I drove up Friday, registered for my stick on pass, and spent just about an hour roaming through the exhibits.
The first Honda plant in Marysville, actually the first in the U.S., was for motorcycles. It opened in 1979 with the intention of building the big Gold Wings. However, that was considered a little too complex for a brand new operation in a brand new country, so production started with the CR250M shown on the right side of the photo. Before too long, the facility was turning out Gold Wings and it turned out a whole lot of them before closing in 2005.
Although I don’t believe any of these were ever made in Marysville, these are the machines that firmly established Honda in the U.S. The Civic was the first Honda automobile to achieve any sort of success here. Next to it are 50cc and 90cc motorbikes. The only vehicle I’ve ever owned with a Honda nameplate fit between these two, at 65cc. The 50cc Honda is the most popular motorized vehicle in the world with more than 85 million sold. I think everybody’s view of two-wheeled Hondas changed when the 4-cylinder CB750 came out. I never owned one, but did ride one when a friend and I swapped bikes for a day. Nice bike.
I did own one of these. Actually I just leased it, and it’s an Acura rather than a Honda so there are two technicalities allowing my only-owned-one-Honda claim. Acura was the first upscale brand from a Japanese auto maker and the 1986 Legend was one of their first offerings. I loved the car, but didn’t care for the leasing experience.
Honda has definitely done some serious racing on both four wheels and two.
Marysville is only about thirty crow-miles from The Ohio State University campus, so it’s only natural that some long term collaboration would take place between the two. That a Buckeye wrapped pickup truck would result from that partnership was probably inevitable.
Honda continues to develop other forms of transportation. Here are vehicles with two, one, and zero (Yeah, I know it’s gotta land sometime.) wheels. The two wheeled Motocompacto looks like something Inspector Gadget might use to cover the last mile to a crime scene. The UNI-CUB is controlled by body position. I guess it’s kind of like a Segway with one less wheel.
And there are even devices like the Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility that transport themselves. Nearby is an image of ASIMO on a screen (That’s me in the corner.) with a spot marked on the floor where guys like me can stand and make awkward gestures and get undeserved compliments.
No one will be surprised to hear that I paused in the Heritage Center lobby to check email and search for nearby breweries. You may be surprised to see that once I reached a brewery, I ordered a flight. It’s something I don’t normally do because I think a full pint of a single beer is better. But everything I read about Camp Brewing made a point of mentioning the flights in small Igloo coolers so I decided to go with the flow. The original location really is at a camp near Indian Lake. I went to the second location in Marysville where Markley poured and delivered my flight with a smile.