No boat travel
The Florence Harbor Marina is located in the Muscle Shoals section of Alabama that is comprised of four cities - Florence on the north side of the Tennessee River and Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia on the south side. We decided that since we have some time here, we should explore and see some of the many attractions in the area. As we were talking about our plans to explore to Dawn from Movin' On this morning, she said that they had signed up for the courtesy van with Liz and Bob from Knot So Easy to take a look around the local area. Since the van holds six people , we asked if we could join them.
Dawn and Collin had the van reserved for 1:00, so Clark and I had some time to explore on our own before joining them. We decided to go visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Rosenbaum House. The climb up the hill into Florence from the marina by bike was brutal. I have not been able to get out on my bike as much as I did in Canada, so I think the main fault with my struggles is my being out of shape. I am not, however, the only person to complain about that climb up to the city. Other boaters with bikes have struggled up to town as well. I can say that I never walked my bike, but I did stop to catch my breath a few times.
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| Frank Lloyd Wrigth's Rosenbaum House in Florence, AL |
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| House for short people? The cover over the entryway is very low with only a couple of inches over my head. I'm sure my 6'5" son. Chris, would not be able to stand up under here. |
W.C. Handy is known as the "Father of the Blues". He was born in Florence and his trumpet and his piano where he composed "The St. Louis Blues" are on display here. Unfortunately, the house is closed on Sunday, so we only saw the outside of the house.
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| W.C. Handy home in Florence, AL |
The sculpture on the property depicting a blues musician group was quite clever.
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| "Blues" metal sculpture |
When I ate breakfast this morning, I found that the milk in the fridge, although a new container, tasted off. When we left to go into Florence, we saw a "Grocery and Bait Store" close to the marina. We were glad that we found something so close that we could stop when we came back from biking around Florence instead of looking for a store in town. I left Clark outside with the bikes to go in for my milk and got a huge surprising disappointment. The store only sold groceries and items that a person going out on a fishing boat might buy, i.e. no milk - only beer and soda to drink. The groceries appeared to be mostly various flavors of potato chips. When I came out empty handed, Clark popped his head in and took the picture below that shows the racks and racks of lures and hooks and fishing line because he was impressed with the quantity of fishing gear packed into such a small convenience store.
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| Fishing Lures and Other Gear in the Grocery Store |
We had lunch and then joined our touring friends at 1:00 as planned. We all climbed into the van and set off across the bridge to the Tuscumbia side of the Tennessee River. Our first stop was recommended by staff at the marina - The Muscle Shoals Recording Studio where many musicians have recorded their music. I will never know which musicians might have recorded here, however, because it was closed for the day.
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| Muscle Shoals Recording Studio |
The next point of interest on the visitor's to do list was the Helen Keller home and museum. We hoped to be able to see the famous water pump where she made the connection between sign language and objects when she learned the word for "water". Sadly we found the gates closed and padlocked with no entry. Never-the-less, Clark was able to get some pictures.
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| Ivy Green - Helen Keller's Birthplace Tuscumbia, AL |
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| Famous Helen Keller water pump on display within the gazebo |
Undaunted by our lack of success thus far we decided to try our luck at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame which is located just down the street from Helen Keller's birthplace.
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| Alabama Music Hall of Fame |
Once again we found the doors closed to the public due to it being Sunday. As we drove away, I pulled up Google so we could learn who had been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Of all the names listed, I had only ever heard of a handful of them including one of my favorite groups "Alabama" (alphabetically at the top of the list). Others I recognized included Hank Williams, Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle), Lionel Richie, Nat King Cole, Tammy Wynette, and the Temptations.
After the excitement of visiting so many closed places, we decided to go to the one place we knew would be open for business - Walmart! We each had shopping to do so we split up to go our separate ways in the store with an agreed upon time to meet back at the entrance. I got my milk, and I am hoping that I can have breakfast without it leaving a bad taste in my mouth afterwards.
We had planned on being out touring the sites from 1:00 until 5:00, but since every place we visited was closed, we did our exploring in record time and returned back to the marina at just after 3:00. Since we were back early, I decided I now had time to do my laundry, and Clark decided that he really should try to clean the dirty mustache off the front of the boat. Traveling on the inland waterways throws up water on the bow of the boat that leaves a brownish red dirt mark somewhat resembling a mustache. Since we are going to the Rendezvous, and folks may see our boat, we decided it would be nice if it was a bit cleaner in appearance.
The marina only has one stacked washer - dryer so it took quite a while for me to complete my two loads of wash. Long ago I decided that whites, darks, and bright colors all go in together on cold wash. I do not want any pink clothes from mixing reds with whites, but I also do not want to spend the time or money to separate the items out into multiple loads. My second load today was my sheets and a couple of towels thrown in for good measure. I guess the washer/dryer must be on a slope of some sort - gentle but sloped just the same. The dryer door kept closing on me every time I reached into the washer for another handful of clothes. A couple of times it came close to giving me a "good what for" across the back of the head.
When I completed my laundry, the time was rapidly approaching sunset. As a confirmation to that fact I nearly jumped a foot with the nightly firing of the canon at sunset. Even though I had the same reaction last night, it still took me by surprise when it went off. A few minutes later the canon boomed once more. Did we have two sunsets tonight??? I watched the sunset from the docks near the washer/dryer, and it was a beautiful sight. I could see the bright sun behind the rows of trees in McFarland park with yellow, orange, and red highlights blended overhead. My phone camera was back on the boat. I looked over Clark's way a few times to see if he was paying attention to the sky, but he did not appear to see it as he was busy with his cleaning - so sadly no sunset picture for tonight's blog.
I have decided that happiness is an empty laundry bag as such I was very happy when I walked back to the boat with my clean laundry. This type of happiness, however, does not last too long. Tomorrow all the laundry happiness will be gone as it starts to pile up once again.
When I finally got back to the boat with my laundry, Clark was just putting his cleaning things away. To get to both sides of the bow to clean it, he had rotated the boat at the dock.
As I climbed on board with my bag of clean sheets, he was just ready to rotate it back around to its original position. Steve from One Bay At A Time helped him on shore while I took hold of the bow line to assist with tying the dock lines. The boat looks amazing now - no more mustache. I need to enjoy it while it lasts because this is something that needs to be done repeatedly as long as we travel inland waterways. I guess the salt spray from the ocean must wash it off in New Jersey because we have never dealt with this issue before.
After dinner, we tried watching some television. The only station on which we found anything at all worth watching was the Alabama PBS station. Unfortunately Master Piece Theater and "The Widower" are both series. I had no idea what was going on in "Indian Summers", and I will never know the ending to "The Widower". We should not even have bothered to watch either show. Now as I am typing my blog entry, Clark is playing his guitar - such better choices for both of us.
I woke up this morning to outside temperatures around 42 degrees. I never remembered to look at the temp inside to see how low it got in the boat. I did try blowing to see if I could see my breath. The answer was no thankfully. We did not run any heat last night. Some time during the night I got cold enough to pull out a third blanket to throw over us on the bed. When I made the first trek to the head this morning, I put on a long-sleeved shirt, my jeans, a fleece and a coat.
By the time I came back from showering, I was yanking the fleece and coat off as fast as I could. That sun is hot! Very quickly I decided that long pants were not appropriate either. I never verified it, but the high today supposedly rose to about 76. Since I spent most of the day in shorts and t-shirt, I can believe it was somewhere around there. I am hoping that these wild temperature swings will result in some beautiful tree leave colors for our trip further along the Tennessee and Tenn-Tom waterways in coming days.
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