Author: Rosalind Ferris

There’s a stretch of East Tennessee where the hills look ordinary from the highway, all pasture fence and pine, nothing hinting at what sits beneath….

Cooler mornings in Tennessee bring out a certain kind of bragging. Ask around and half the state will tell you their little farm down the…

I pulled off a Tennessee exit ramp expecting a quick stretch of the legs and maybe a sandwich. Three hours later I was still walking…

Somewhere in East Tennessee, between mountain overlooks and pancake houses, sits a shopping strip so long that people talk about it in sections instead of…

Some of the best meals in Tennessee happen at the end of a road you’d never guess led anywhere. I followed a two-lane stretch past…

Half an hour west of Knoxville, past the strip malls and the traffic lights, there is a 250-acre patch of Tennessee woods where somebody has…

Somewhere along a two-lane Tennessee highway, past cattle fields and mailboxes spaced a quarter mile apart, there is a small restaurant that does not look…

Somewhere in East Tennessee, there is a low brick storefront where the lights stay dim, the tables wear red checkered cloths, and the line forms…

Some of the best plates of food in Tennessee come out of buildings you would drive right past. There is a kitchen in the northeast…

Some of the best stops in Tennessee do not announce themselves with billboards. They sit at a crossroads or beside an old rail line, and…

Some Tennessee back roads reward you with scenery, and some reward you with lunch. I pulled off a two-lane highway west of the state’s biggest…

Somewhere in Tennessee there is a coffee counter where the register does not tell you what to pay. You order a latte, you drop what…

The best swimming water in Tennessee usually costs nothing but gas and a cooler full of sandwiches. I learned that the summer I pulled off…

Somewhere between a Tennessee two-lane and a downtown parking meter, there is a kitchen with a screen door, a coffee pot that never sits still,…

Somewhere up in the coal-country ridges of East Tennessee, a gravel road climbs past old mining land and ends at a gate, a small parking…

Somewhere in eastern Tennessee, past the billboards and the go-kart tracks, there is a gravel lot beside a creek where kids hand a fish to…

Somewhere out in the flat, quiet farmland of northwest Tennessee, past cotton fields and cypress trees, there is a dining room that has been frying…

Somewhere on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, there is a storefront on a quiet main street that smells like cinnamon before you even reach the…

Somewhere along a riverfront in Tennessee, two peaked glass buildings sit side by side, and most people driving past have no idea that a single…

Some Tennessee walks ask you to bring a book. This one hands you the pages as you go, mounted on posts along a wooded path…

Some of the best stops in Tennessee are the ones nobody puts on a billboard. On a two-lane road in the eastern part of the…

Somewhere in Middle Tennessee, off a side street you would drive past without a second look, there is a low brick building with a hand-lettered…

Somewhere along a busy Tennessee highway, between the go-kart tracks and the pancake signs, there is a low building with blue lights inside and the…

Half a mile from the loudest sidewalks in Tennessee, the noise just drops away. Behind a stone facade with gargoyles peering down at traffic, there…

Most people picture Tennessee’s big trees somewhere out east, up in the mountains where the roads get twisty. But there’s a patch of ancient hardwood…

Some of the best meals in Tennessee happen because you got hungry at the wrong exit. Halfway between two big cities, a hundred-year-old cabin sits…

A friend of mine spent years assuming retirement meant leaving the South for somewhere cheaper, until she ran the numbers on a few Tennessee towns…

Somewhere in East Tennessee, a parking tram drops you at a gate where the smell of hot cinnamon bread hits before you even scan your…