By Mike Steely For more than 50 years my wife and I have been collecting things. As a reporter and an advertising representative we’ve moved around a lot, visited every state except Alaska, and we’ve collected mementos of places such as cups, photos, postcards and buttons. Not sewing buttons but buttons from places, events, slogans […]
By Mike Steely We’ve been doing a lot of home repairing and upgrading while cocooning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve ventured out to get groceries and to buy items like paint, tile, etc. During these days some hardware stores have shown a big profit from fixer-uppers like us. While shopping for home items recently I […]
By Mike Steely We’re fortunate in Knox County to have three veteran cemeteries. On Saturday, December 19, all three hallowed burial grounds should be totally decorated with wreaths from the local “Wreaths Across America” but there’s a problem. Donations to purchase the wreaths is lagging behind. Chris Albrecht, Wreath Program Ambassador, is urgently asking for […]
By Mike Steely The Sgt. Alvin C. York State Historic Park is about a two-hour drive from Knoxville, depending on what route you take, and is well worth a visit. There are lots of interesting sites to see along the way if you wish, like Brushy Mountain Prison, Frozen Head State Park and Wartburg […]
By Mike Steely I was going through my photo files recently and ran across several photos of unusual places in our region. With the COVID-19 pandemic clustering many families inside except for needed food shopping I thought I’d share some of the places with you You can easily drive to most of the strange places […]
By Mike Steely Appalachia is a curious place to many people with its own language of sorts. Being somewhat isolated from the rest of the nation mostly because of topography the region’s dialect developed somewhat unchanged among the Scotch-Irish settlers. You don’t have to travel very far out of Knoxville to hear words that “harking […]
By Mike Steely Norris Dam, the first project of the Tennessee Valley Administration, has a large number of trails and walking paths not only inside the large state park but also along its perimeters. The paths and trails offer a wide variety of difficulties, from Wheelchair Accessible to very hard. If you’re headed to the […]
By Mike Steely Norris Dam State Park may be a favorite of Knox County residents as it’s nearby—only a short drive up Norris Freeway—and has lots of interesting things to do. The park offers unique places to visit, camping at two sites, rental cabins, the historic first TVA dam in history, a visitor center, museum, […]
By Mike Steely If you’ve never been to Rock Island State Park, you’ve missed a very different park that has just about everything you’d expect plus some very special sites. Rock Island is located between Cookeville and McMinnville in the mountains along the Caney Fork and Collins Rivers. It’s best reached west of Knoxville off […]
By Mike Steely If you’re looking for a surprising park and a great overlook you might think of the Great Smoky Mountains but there’s a 1,444-acre state park near Morristown that’s not as crowded and a nice place to visit within an hour’s drive. Panther Creek State Park might be one the most over-looked parks […]
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