Days 79 & 80 – Panther Creek to Florence Harbor Marina in Florence, Alabama - September 23-24, 2011

We left our anchorage under mostly cloudy skies and cool temperatures.  Fred was in jeans and his fleece lined jacket, I was toughing it out in shorts and a fleece top (by the time we arrived in Florence it was definitely shorts weather, so don’t feel too bad for us).  The river has been narrowing as we get closer to Florence and the next lock and dam.  The Tennessee River is a series of dams, so when you are going upstream, the river is quite narrow before you lock through and quite wide after you’ve cleared the lock.  You also get varying current depending on how close you are to a dam and how much water they are letting through.

For a long time, people have been trying to control the Tennessee River so that it can be used to transport people and goods.  We passed what is left of the old Riverton lock today which was part of a canal and lock system built more than 100 years ago.  The canal associated with the Riverton Lock extended over five miles upstream from the lock, bypassing rapids and shoals in the river.

We stayed two nights at the Florence Harbor Marina, so we had time to do a bit of exploring in Florence.  We walked to the Rosenbaum House, a Frank Lloyd Wright home built for Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum in 1939.  This home is an example of Wright’s Usonian design. A few years later, the Rosenbaum family included four boys, and they asked Wright to design an addition to the house which was completed in 1949.  The city of Florence purchased the home from the family in 1999 and had it restored and it is now a museum.  We very much enjoyed our tour.  Alden B. Dow, son of the founder of the Dow Chemical Company was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and designed and built many homes in the Midland area.  In looking at the Rosenbaum House and comparing it to some of the Dow designed homes we have seen, the student/teacher relationship is very obvious.

             Miles: 39.8      Bridges: 1        Locks: 0

what is left of the old Riverton Lock

the shoreline continues to be beautiful

the Natches Trace Parkway bridge

just before turning into the Florence Harbor Marina, you can look up
the river and under the O'Neal Bridge and the railroad bridge and
see the Wilson Dam