Today was a layover day and we did the tourist thing. You might wonder what is there to see in Florence, AL? There is a great deal. This is a beautiful little river town. We joined our friends on $20 Bucks, Ken and Pat, to visit the Helen Keller Birthplace, the Pope Tavern and W.C. Handy Museum. Then we had a luxurious white tablecloth dinner at the Original Dale’s.
For the uninitiated, Helen Keller was blind and deaf from 19 months. She became a world famous advocate for the blind. She had an IQ of 160 and wrote many books and got the Lion’s Clubs to start their support of charities for the vision challenged. I remember her as a child. The movie “The Miracle Worker” with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft was about her life. Patty Duke won an Academy Award for it.
W.C. Handy was the “father of the blues”, wrote “St. Louis Blues” and inspired Gershwin to write “Rhapsody in Blue”.
Pope’s Tavern was used as a field hospital during the War of Northern Aggression for troops on both sides.
And Dale’s is the place where they invented the Dale’s Famous Marinade for steaks. What a day and we did it all with a courtesy car in 4 hours plus a side trip to Walmart.
In the morning we are back on the river and if you follow the SPOT we will actually turn south off the Tennessee and onto the Tenn-Tom or Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway. More on this later. When we make that turn we are approximately 450 miles from Mobile and a long ways from home. Come go with us.
