A Little Piece of Paradise in Clifton, Tennessee

Clifton Marina exemplifies southern hospitality!

When we’re cruising day after day and anchoring out overnight, we get to a point where we’d like to take in the creature comforts a marina will afford. Most marinas offer the essentials of power, water, fuel, laundry, and showers, but every once in a while we are “wowed” – our second stay (the first visit was during our second Loop trip in 2008) at Clifton Marina in Clifton, Tennessee was exactly that. The welcoming reception and unique experience we received while in Clifton could just well be this part of the country’s well-known southern hospitality or maybe it’s a business owner who really cares about his customers. In any case, transient boaters, cruising the Tennessee River, who are lucky enough to have turned toward the eastern shore at the end of a cruising day to enter the narrow channel at Clifton Marina, get an experience above and beyond the norm. This is Gene’s (the owner) little piece of paradise, but we learned fairly quickly that the marina is really run by his more recent manager, Sonja.

Gene (above), the owner of Clifton Marina, knows he’s got a good thing going at his establishment.

The wow factor comes into play because of how well Sonja manages it all – juggling different tasks always with a big smile and a friendly disposition. Everyone agrees she’s a Loretta Lynn look-alike (and sound-alike) with a beautiful smile to enhance the effect. Sonja was always there, sun up to sundown, making sure everyone was taken care of with dock and slip assignments. She’d run out to take care of her marina duties between preparing and stirring the gumbo and bantering with the rest of the marina staff, who we think enjoyed watching her multitask as much as we did. When we arrived Sonja had just begun to prepare a huge pot of gumbo, it would be offered later in the day to whoever showed up at the marina for dinner.

We first met Sonja (above) as she was dicing ingredients that would go into her famous gumbo.

Clifton Marina’s attractive building, directly situated in the thick of things at the marina, houses the office, small necessities, and marina store, TV, kitchen/restaurant – all in one big open room, along with a combo laundry room/shower facility and a large outdoor, covered porch providing an airy boaters lounge fully equipped with TV and eating area.

Minutes after we arrived we noticed this boater helping out the marina by dragging a huge log out of the fairway with his dinghy.

Sonja’s husband and brother are regulars in the marina office/boaters lounge, we enjoyed their humor and friendliness during our stay.

We borrowed the marina’s courtesy car (above) for a quick trip into town.

We thought the above photo was interesting since it’s probably the only time we’ve had a shot of our Ranger Tug next to a Fathom 40 which is the same model as our previous boat, only with a grey hull. Great shot for a size comparison between the two boats.

We met our dock mates, Mark and Jo (above) on Truant and enjoyed a short chat with them on their boat after which Jo and I exchanged some old books.

Jim is checking out (above) and signing the guest register, shortly after adding our info, he flipped a chunk of pages back to 2008 and found our entry in the register from that year, it was when we discovered this little slice of heaven years ago, we were on our second Loop trip, on our Fathom 40.