Alabama - Day 5 - Muscle Shoals, Sheffield and Tuscumbia

Point Mallard Campground
Thursday, 5 December 2019

today's route

I had several destinations today in the western part of north Alabama.

The drive
I continue to be surprised by all the manufacturing that's going on in Decatur.  Today I passed a plant for Bunge North America, which I learned is a big agribusiness company.  This plant is an oil refinery - not petroleum but soybeans and other vegetable oils.

I passed Carpenter Technology, which I learned creates corrosion-resistant alloys for the aerospace and defense industries.

I passed the Robotics Technology Park, which I was surprised to learn is a joint venture between the State of Alabama, the Alabama Community College system and the robotics industry to train the workforce needed for robotics products.

I also passed a huge facility for NUCOR, a steel-producing company.

And to top it off, I passed the turn for Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Plant.  It has the second-most powerful nuclear reactor in the country.

All of which made me wonder about Decatur's growth rate.  I couldn't easily find that information online but did learn that, despite all this, Decatur is still behind Alabama in particular and the US in general for overall jobs and wages/worker.  And some online have complained about Decatur's generally bad air and water quality, though I haven't noticed problems so far.

I passed a sign for Alabama's Birding Trail.  The state has designated several hundred trails for birdwatching - apparently the human snowbirds aren't the only 2-legged critters who come here in the winter.

The drive was mostly through small towns and past fields for crops, cows and horses.  Lots of horses.  I passed one field with more horses grazing than I'd seen in all my time in Kentucky.  It turned out to be next door to a polo club, so I'm sure there was a reason they were there.  But I just cannot understand why I didn't see more horses in Kentucky.

I saw one horse that was beautiful and unusually colored.  It was primarily a dark chocolate color with a swoop of creamy tan across its back and down its sides and a blond mane.  Really pretty.

Coming in the opposite direction I saw a piece of farm equipment so large it took up both lanes on its side of the road.  A semi coming from behind it had to move into the center turn lane to go around it.

I passed a sign saying Welcome to Rogersville - A Fisherman's Paradise.  Don't know why it is, but that's what they say.

I do know they have a plant called Custom Synthetic Fibers, which is a recycled polyester fiber plant.

And they have a Mexican and Japanese restaurant - together - it offers both kinds of food.

Farther down the road is the turn for Killen, which is where I saw the polo club.  I also saw a low-tech amusement park called Killen Time (get it?).  Low tech meaning miniature golf and like that.

I came into Florence and saw a billboard proclaiming "Florence earns platinum for being sustainable."  Turns out Florence is one of 8 cities in the entire TVA system that has achieved this level of sustainability.  Oddly, TVA describes the award as designating a community that "works toward developing a healthy environment, has a thriving community, and has long-term economic prosperity."  I say oddly because there's nothing there that sounds like energy savings or carbon footprint, the ideas that I thought "sustainability" has come to indicate.

Then I crossed the Tennessee River again on the Singing River Bridge.  I had to look that up of course and learned the Native tribe that once lived here before they got sent to Oklahoma called the Tennessee River the Singing River.  They believed a woman lived in the river and sang to them.  I think the river is turning north here on its way back up to Kentucky.

Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield and Tuscumbia all run together so thoroughly a newcomer would have trouble sorting out which town is where.  I knew only when I passed a city limits sign here and there.

I was aiming to find a waterfall in Muscle Shoals at the Wilson Dam.

Wilson Dam Waterfall
I had envisioned a trail through trees and other growing things.  What I found instead was a paved road with a tall rock wall on one side and the Tennessee River on the other.  But it's a nice waterfall, it was an easy walk, and there was a very large flock of White Pelicans enjoying the water being stirred up by the overflow from the dam.

the long explanation for the dam from a sign posted there

Wilson Dam, on the Tennessee River in northwest Alabama, is the only neoclassical-style dam in the TVA system, integrating themes of ancient Roman and Greek architecture into the modern structure. 

The construction of Wilson Dam began in 1918, a year after the United States entered World War I. The federal government built two nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals for the making of explosives, and Wilson Dam was constructed to supply the electricity needed to power the plants. TVA acquired Wilson Dam in 1933.

The above is the short explanation for the dam taken from the TVA's website.

you can see the classical architectural influences

At the far left you can see water pouring through the dam.  What you can't see is that there are maybe 100+ pelicans swimming around in the water there.  The water flow looks pretty strong, and I watched them over and over getting in one of the currents and floating downstream, then flying back up to the dam and starting over.  I'm guessing the turbulence of the water stirs up fish for them to eat.

my first view of them

close-up from above photo

floating down the river

I never expected to see birds like these and it made me happy to see them.  The bird book says this place is just barely within their winter range.

I couldn't get a recognizable photo of it, but there's a little bay in the rocks at the far left of the dam, and I saw a large mob of pelicans hanging out there.

The waterfall that I actually went to see comes out of a rock wall on the far right side of the dam.

Wilson Dam Waterfall

Nobody wants to tell me how tall this waterfall is.  I checked nearly a dozen websites, and was told many times the walk to get here is a quarter-mile on a paved road near the dam.  But I have no idea how tall this is.

What I do know is that there's a lot of water seeping through the rock wall along this pathway, and I saw photos online of icicles that formed all along the wall during the winter.  I saw other smaller waterfalls, too.

As you can see, these are coming from caves in the wall.  I saw a sign saying this rock wall is karst topography - karst being the type of rock that can result in the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.  So yeah, there are caves in this area.

There are also plenty of signs warning of both falling rock and of dangerous waters.  Many signs warn that the water level can rise suddenly with no warning and the area is dangerous.  With all those signs, I was glad to get in, get my photos, and get out again before something fell on me or I got swept away by water.

The water on the path in the photo above is from the waterfall, which is immediately to my right as I took this photo.  That's the dam straight ahead.

All in all, I was glad I stopped here.  Had a pleasant walk to an interesting water feature and really enjoyed the pelicans.

Sheffield Post Office
As usual, Google's directions told me to do something that didn't match up at all to the roads I encountered, so I got on the wrong road entirely.  I stayed on it, though, because I saw a sign saying it was the way to Sheffield's downtown and, sure enough, I got to the post office anyway.  But I have no idea at all what Google was thinking.

Turns out the postal employee I talked to needed help too.  David had told me he was sending me c/o General Delivery an envelope of mail he and Anna had gotten for me.  Unfortunately, all the regular staff were taking a lunch break, so I got a guy who didn't know their system and needed lots of instruction from me that I couldn't give him.  In other words, he couldn't find it.

Later, I called up the post office and a woman said sure, it was there, but I'd needed to tell the guy it was sent Special Delivery, which they put in a different place.  The guy, she said, had been looking with the parcels.  Well, sure, I'd have been glad to tell him if I'd known it was Special Delivery and if I'd dreamed that would make any difference.  To me - non postal employee that I am - it seems they'd put General Delivery mail in one spot, no matter how it was sent.  Maybe, but not in Sheffield.

Anyway, I didn't get it today.

Tuscumbia
I passed a historical marker saying in 1878 a yellow fever epidemic took 31 lives here.  Doctors, nurses and volunteers - "of both white and black" it says - worked around the clock for days to care for the victims and bury the ones who died.  Let's hear it for modern vaccines!

Helen Keller was born here and her former home is now a museum.  The very water pump that's been immortalized in The Miracle Worker is still there and can be visited.  I'd intended to go but by this time was tired and still had an hour's drive back to the campground so decided to pass it up.

Did you know both she and Anne Sullivan are buried together at the Washington National Cathedral?  I didn't.

Downtown Tuscumbia looks exactly like it must have looked when she lived here - if she'd have been able to see it, of course.  Very turn-of-the-last-century.

The drive back
I saw a campaign sign reminding me that I'd heard former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville is running for US Senate.  That's the seat that Jeff Sessions and Roy Moore are also running for.  They and several others are in the Republican primary to face incumbent Doug Jones.  A recent poll shows Tuberville ahead, but it's early yet.

I passed enormous bales of cotton that don't look at all like I thought they'd look.  At least, I'm pretty sure that's what they were.  They looked like 8' tall tubes of pink plastic wrapped around a zillion huge Q-tips.  I was so stunned I didn't try to stop and take a photo, but I'm hoping I'll see more of them later.

Back in Decatur, I turned on a side street to avoid the traffic jam I could see up ahead in a construction zone and found myself on Church Street, where I saw 4 churches within 3 city blocks.