Oct. 19: Headed to Florence, Alabama. Seeing many power plants of the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority).Turning in to the Florence Marina. The Marina offered a courtesy car so we were able to do some grocery shopping in the afternoon.Oct. 20: The Showboat American Queen arrived sometime during the night to take on passengers for a Fall foliage cruise to Chattanooga.Our Alaskan friends Skip and Karen Binkley keep their boat at the Florence Marina for the summer months. They picked us up and brought us over to their condominium. On the way we stopped at an overlook to the Wilson Lock. This lock has been a source of concern for us since it is closed from 6am to 6pm for repairs, which means we have to enter in the dark… to be continued!Skip and Karen live in the top left condo overlooking the Tennessee River. They’ll head south on their boat for Florida next week.Looking down from their condo is a cool railroad bridge that was also a car bridge.Placard explains some of the history of the bridge.Took a nice walk to the end of the bridge on the car portion.Skip and Bob looking over the end of the bridge (the final segment has been removed). American Queen is in the background.Looking down from the bridge is a tree decorated with men and women’s underwear (and mardi gras beads).Our tour continued with a trip to the 3 small towns (Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals) on the south side of the Tennessee River. Who knew? Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia.Waterfalls in the community park in Tuscumbia.Went to lunch at Champy’s which specializes in “Blues, brews and birds (fried chicken).”Something else on the long list of things I didn’t know: many famous artists (i.e. Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Paul Simon, etc.) came to Muscle Shoals to be recorded. The Recording Studios from the outside looked like plain brown cinder block buildings.Back at the marina the American Queen heads toward the Wilson Lock. The coordinator of the Looper Organization worked out a plan for 13 “Loopers” to come down the Wilson lock since the chamber was being opened for the American Queen before 6pm.The steam coming off the top stern of the boat is from the Calliope – an organ like instrument that uses steam boat whistles. The calliopiest played a rousing version of The Piano Man and then God Bless America as the boat headed out.Next up: The Binkleys took us to the Marriot’s Grille 360 which is one of those cool revolving restaurants.From the top we could see the parade of looper boats heading toward the marina after having exited the lock.Sunset from the restaurant. Apparently the Earth has three moons.We were able to see the American Queen rise up in the lock – a lift of 97 feet! We didn’t think the boat was going to fit under the bridge, but she did.Oct.21: Our tour continued the next day with a visit to a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home (Usorian) in the town of Florence. This building was in shambles in the 1990s but the town of Florence purchased it, restored it and made it into a museum.Front door. If you’re over 6 feet tall, this house may not be for you.Lunch today was way out of town, the Rattlesnake Saloon – built into a cave. Karen, Skip and Bob pose for a picture.There was a bit of a walk down to the restaurant so they offered a pick up truck “taxi.” We choose to walk.Back near the marina was another Indian Mound – 43 feet tall.Looking up – 70 steps.Placard explains the Mound.Looking down.The museum was very interesting. They had several displays of arrowheads. No wonder I didn’t find any the other day – they’re all in this museum!Monet’s Water Lilies heron.Sunset scene on the way back over to the Binkley’s for a wonderful dinner at their condo. Thank you Skip and Karen for a very interesting two days of touring!Oct. 22: So to get through the gigantic Wilson Lock, we had to get up at 4:45 am, travel 30 minutes and enter by 5:15am. It was an amazing cavern to enter!At the bottom of the lock the depth was 15.7 feet.At the top, about 20 minutes later – the depth was 119 feet! Can’t even wrap my head around filling a 600 by 110 foot chamber with 97 feet of water. Must be billions of gallons!At the top, the front “wall” descends (instead of two doors opening).A half hour later we were treated to an amazing sunrise.And then the winds whipped up – crazy! Roughest waters we’ve had in weeks. And bonus, our port engine overheated which made for a little bit of drama as the smoke detectors went off. We shut down the engines and quickly determined it was the port engine. We were able to continue on to Rogersville to the Joe Wheeler State Park Marina on just the starboard engine.Docked by 9:30 am. Felt like it was 5pm! Took all afternoon to remove the old chewed up impeller and replace it with a new one (we carry spares). I’m holding the chewed up impeller. Took forever to dig out the bits of rubber which I’m holding in my other hand. And once again… it’s a boat!
2 thoughts on “Oct. 19-22, 2017 Florence, Alabama”
Another great blog!
There’s a good documentary about muscle shoals on Netflix. It chronicles the beginning of the recording studio and all the artists that have recorded there. I watched it about 6 months ago.
Love you
Deb
Islandia Grabo's Blog 
Another great blog!
There’s a good documentary about muscle shoals on Netflix. It chronicles the beginning of the recording studio and all the artists that have recorded there. I watched it about 6 months ago.
Love you
Deb
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Thanks for inspiring us to go to the Muscle Shoals Sounds Recording studio. It was fantastic!!
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