Wed, Aug 10 to Tues, Aug 16, 2011 – mile 256, Florence Harbor Marina, Florence, AL

It was a beautiful sunny morning and at 9 am we were already at the state park fuel dock getting ready to check out the facilities. The marina manager was very friendly and encouraged us to take our time and look around the place. The marina building included showers and a washer and dryer as well as a store where one could buy snacks, very basic groceries and a few marine items. The 75-room lodge was lovely and the restaurant was supposed to be quite good. There were many boats slipped here including both power boats and sailboats and it looked like the permanent slips were full. There was lots of room at the transient dock which was located in front of the lodge and next to the swimming pool. The park had an 18-hole golf course, 27 cabins for rent and miles of walking trails. If we had checked this spot out earlier, we probably would have chosen to slip the boat here rather than in Florence.

For the next hour and a half we enjoyed walking around the park and then decided we’d better get moving if we wanted to make it through the locks at both ends of Wilson Lake. We lucked out and didn’t have to wait for either lock as we made our way to Florence Harbor arriving at 2 pm. We took the time to fuel up before motoring to our slip and we were very happy to finally plug into shore power and get the air conditioning going as the temperature approached 100 degrees. It seemed that Florence was always hotter than anywhere else in the area.

We spent the next few days doing the usual boat chores. On Friday, we rented a vehicle from Enterprise so we could shuttle our car down to Port St Joe, Florida. We took off early Saturday with Maureen driving our Toyota and Gale driving the rental car. It was an easy and enjoyable trip that took about 8 hours and we arrived at the marina in PSJ before Lisa, the manager, had left for the day. Through an earlier conversation, Lisa had told us it would be fine to park the car in their lot until we could get there with the boat. She told us where we could park and let us know that when we do come back, she expected us to stay for awhile since we only spent one night there on our way through in April. Gale would really like to come back before September 25th when the scallop season closes. We saw some of the scallops that people were bringing in and they were huge!!

The drive back to Florence on Sunday was even nicer since we were able to share the driving task in one car. Before returning the vehicle on Monday, we made a grocery run to Walmart to get ready for the next week of traveling downriver.

On Tuesday evening before leaving Florence, Bruce Cherry, whom we had met on the dock the previous week, brought over to our boat a roast pork dinner that he had prepared along with a wonderful mixture of roasted vegetables to accompany the meal. He had invited his friends, Goodlow and Susan Pride, to join us and we had a lovely evening visiting with these folks, going for a pontoon ride and then later enjoying the very tasty pork, vegetables and wine. Goodlow shared with us a few stories and a lot of knowledge about this portion of the Tennessee River.