Way back in ancient times when I actually had to work for a living we visited Knoxville as a potential retirement location so we were slightly familiar with the area.
Much like Chattanooga there is a lot of street art although it tends to be more scattered. Sandwiched between the Tennessee River on the southeast and the mountains on the northwest our initial impression was a gigantic strip mall although it is now fattening out with tendrils all along the I-40 and I-75 intersection.
We were attracted by the relatively pleasant weather, access to the wide expanses of the Tennessee River and the nearby mountains, the intellectual stimulation of the University of Tennessee, and the technical foundation of nearby Oak Ridge which was one of the major sites developing the atomic weapons during WWII. The Sunsphere is a remnant of the 1982 Worlds Fair that transformed an old Louisville and Nashville Railway eyesore into a community asset and gained the city over 11 million visitors but left behind a $46 million debt.
Since the fair, World's Fair Park has undergone multiple transformations at this time including a covered stage, the large green viewed from the top of the Sunsphere, and the variable jet fountain shown in the overview. Normally when I get to a high vantage point like the Sunsphere I try to do a panorama series but what I ended up with just does not seem to fit together right. That probably relates to not having my good DSLR and having to rely on the little point and shoot for our visit to Knoxville.
Like Nashville we took advantage of a great bus system to do most of our explorations like this grove of Cedars native to Lebanon at the Knoxville Botanical Garden adjacent to the Martha H. Ashe Garden that was mostly bedded down for the winter and did not have many flowers or even coleus this late in the year. We have not done a lot of chasing yet but Tennessee also has barn Quilts like this one on the garden maintenance shed.
Another major bus adventure was our visit to the Ijams Nature Center which was over the river, deep into the woods, and well past grandma's house.
The bus stop is about 3/4 mile from the visitors center. We walked another mile or so along the trails to a boardwalk mounted on the cliff wall overlooking the Tennessee River with these caves and folded rocks. Then it was another 3/4 mile back to the bus stop where we waited well past the scheduled arrival of the return bus and even other buses coming from Knoxville. In desperation we walked another quarter mile to a stop where we could catch the outbound and finally get back to the main terminal. Apparently there was some type of road problem and the bus was diverted to bypass our stop since it was rarely used anyway.
Normally I would put our visits to the Ijams Nature Center and the Knoxville Zoo on separate pages but with my good camera being repaired I did not get all that many photographs at either location. If we get back and I have more time it's so easy to redo, splice, and dice these pages. The zoo was almost mothballed for the winter with the fun guy and little guy as the most interesting.
Surprisingly the tortoise were still out and very active. If I have the signs right the darker guy is a Radiated Tortoise and the lighter one is a Star Tortoise. Probably the most significant thing I saw was the Dip-n-dots concession abandon with the cooler open. Almost no one was around so little chance of anything going missing.
Eastern Tennessee has a very strong musical tradition with homegrown musicians performing at any kind of get together. Each weekday two of these local groups were invited to perform at the visitors center between noon and 1pm. At each performance they were touting the Louie Bluie Festival on the coming weekend about 40 miles up I-75 at Cove Lake State Park and one group we really liked was planning to perform.
For years the festival had been held in June with scorching temperatures. Moving it to October first meant it was predictably wet cold and miserable. Also predictably the group we really wanted to see did not perform until late afternoon. Also predictably the first thing they did taking the stage was turn the volume up to painful levels. Unfortunately what we have come to expect at live concerts. Modern performance theory seems to be even or especially if you can't play well turn the volume up and no one will notice. Sort of a sour note to end the page but most of the music was very good and well performed at reasonable volume levels.