Knoxville, Tennessee

Top things we did in Knoxville:

• World’s Fair Park and Knoxville Sun Sphere
• Ijams Nature Center and Riverwalk Trail
• Norris Dam State Park

Knoxville has some really interesting places to explore. We walked around downtown to some of the art gardens and restaurant areas. We visited in the summer and as you would expect with a college town, it was not super busy.

Knoxville was the home of the 1982 World’s Fair. They have turned the park and center piece of the fair (the Sunsphere) into a beautiful reprieve from the everyday hustle and bustle of a small college city – with fountains on one end, an amphitheater in the middle and waterfall on the other end; the park is flanked by museums and art space on one side and a variety of shops, restaurants, and the civic center on the other. You can meander throughout the park in an hour or so. Within the park, you are surrounded by tributes to the past and promise of the future. The Sunsphere acts as both a museum to the world’s fair held here in 1982 and a viewing area of the city.

The Ijams nature center is on the east side of town, somewhat close to the airport. It runs along the Tennessee River, just west of where it meets up with the Holston and French Broad Rivers. There are several trails of various levels through the nature center with elevated boardwalk along the cliffs next to the river for fantastic views of the Tennessee while you walk.

Close to the Ijams nature center is Meads Quarry – this is a popular place to swim and paddle during the summer. We walked by, but didn’t have the time to splash. So this will go on our list for the next time we’re in Knoxville!

We went to watch the sunset over the dam at Norris Dam one evening and were not disappointed! Norris Dam is about 20 minutes south of where we stayed this time and has two campgrounds. We went to look at both campgrounds while we were exploring the dam. I’m not sure that we would want to take our Reflection (or anything larger) to these campground – smaller set ups would have no problem. We did see a few larger rigs at one of the campgrounds (the one on the hill). Both campgrounds seem to be in line with our TN State Park experiences to date.