Step-by-Step Walking Trail

Leg 1: Downtown Core & Artist Alley (~0.5 Miles)

• Start: Exit State Street Garage onto Union Avenue and walk west toward Gay Street.

• Strong Alley Graffiti Gallery: Enter the alley running parallel between Gay Street and Market Square Click to open side panel for more information (between Union Ave and Wall Ave). This dense corridor features dozens of layered murals, local tags, pop-culture portraits, and Dolly Parton tributes.

Just a note: the Strong Alley is a regular hangout for many of Knox’s homeless - so it smells of human waste and foul body odor. While we had no unwanted run-ins, it did not leave Trish feeling confident in that particular area.

Leg 2: Historic Old City Murals (~0.6 Miles)

• Walk north on Gay Street, passing the corner mural outside the Visitors Center at Summit Hill Drive.

• Head down into the Old City Click to open side panel for more information along West Jackson Avenue and North Central Street.

• Key Murals to Spot:

  • The Old City Music Mural celebrating East Tennessee’s roots and early country music heritage.

  • The large-scale murals and typography along the Jackson Avenue railway viaduct walls and brick warehouse facades.

Leg 3: The North Broadway / Central Corridor (~1.3 Miles)

• Head north up North Central Street into the historic warehouse district, then connect across to North Broadway.

• Key Highlight: The iconic “Greetings from Knoxville” postcard mural (located near 1134 N Broadway).

• The surrounding blocks also feature several contemporary graphic murals on neighborhood coffee shops, breweries, and retail buildings.

Leg 4: Southwest to World's Fair Park (~1.3 Miles)

• Loop southwest via 11th Street / Western Avenue down to World’s Fair Park.

• Walk along the perimeter and pedestrian bridges surrounding the Sunsphere and the Knoxville Museum of Art grounds, where you will pass public sculptures and civic art installations.

Leg 5: Krutch Park & Return (~0.6 Miles)

• Cross Clinch Avenue back into downtown via Charles Krutch Park, known for its tranquil sculptures and changing outdoor installations.

• Stroll through Market Square and head east down Clinch or Union Avenue to finish right back at State Street Garage.

Walking Tips

• Terrain: Mostly paved sidewalks with gentle rolling elevation changes, particularly coming up from the Old City and World’s Fair Park basins.

• Refreshment Stops: The Old City (around mile 1.1) and North Central (around mile 2.0) offer convenient spots for coffee or water.

Here are some of the outskirts murals…

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I love the notion of civic art. Images that are painted, sculptures added, lending life and visual interest to a space. The ones shared are only a few… if you are ever in the Knoxville area, be sure and drive around (or better yet - walk) and see the human beauty that fills the city. It will do you good.

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This “truck and building” to me — is a picture of Knox, holding onto its roots and times past, while brimming with new life and continued growth.

A bit “scruffy” around the edges, but a genuine warmth of human compassion and grit to get things done. A lovely place and a perfect starting point for our “Are We There Yet” adventure.

An art style that I adopted for quick sketches and fresh bits of color tones - allows me to get more practice in sketching (gotta keep the hand-eye thing alive), still bring color to the story (I love the watercolor overlays), and be portable enough to bring along on car trips and plane rides (a few Micron pens, a watercolor palette and water-filled brushes by Pentel).

This is the finished art with watercolor applied… is it perfect? No… but it is as complete as I am going to get it - and that my friends, is life. Knowing when you have reached a level of complete with which you can be satisfied. I am still learning that - even at almost 52.

Just before we arrived, she recorded this:

Once we got there, our first leg of the trip was to Paris, France. Nic had to work, so was not able to join us for these 2 days:

This next video is mostly clips from Nic, Wes and Parker climbing the Zugspitze. Nic is my middle son, and Wes is my youngest.

Austria, Switzerland and back to Germany. This was awesome…

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On their website, Little Free Library shares the following values:

And - they go on to communicate the impact that reading can have on children, adults and communities. All wins as an avid reader myself. The exposure to worlds and ideas that re beyond your current lived experience is invaluable to developing minds, so I champion the sharing of books and love for reading.

But that to me is not where this article is heading. What I have found interesting is the little structures built to house these literary gifts, and the books found within. To me - those are a story unto themselves. A neighborhood’s or an individual neighbor’s book-sharing box acts like an accidental cultural snapshot—the craftsmanship, design, and weathering of the structure paired with the specific mix of titles (children’s classics, niche hobbies, dog-eared bestsellers, or forgotten textbooks) reveal a lot about the community's character, demographic rhythms, and values.

Let me share a few with you I have endeavored to capture during our time in Knoxville and some of the insights I feel the box and its contents seem to share.

The design of this box shows deliberate intent. They did not just throw something up to give away books, they made something that reflects the home behind it with a palette and style match (white framing, dark roof, deep red door frame to match the Dutch Colonial behind it.) The addition of a steeple tower reflects either a chapel or classic one-room schoolhouse - a nod to community and learning. The setting of a lush flower garden it is nestled in feels inviting to passers-by (without an air of ‘no trespassing’ isolation).

The books included are a mix of early childhood (notably Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae (excellent book that Trish’s kids adored)), middle-grade and classic youth (all of these were stories I personally enjoyed - like: Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, Sounder, The Sign of the Beaver, Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and Lemony Snicket's All The Wrong Questions), and even a few adult-focused reads (none that I had personally ventured to explore.)

This stop reflects an established ,thoughtful neighborhood, rich with pride and multi-generational connectivity. The homeowner cares about aesthetic sensibilities, and community hospitality, and being a local asset to ages young and old.

This next box leans away from ornamental and into pure, honest utility. The container is a functional display in white, with a cleanly designed, printed and laminated sign in the glass pane that reads “Neighborhood Book Exchange.” It gets lots of use and represents a diverse range of readership ages with the ultimate eclectic melting pot of contents.

Highbrow Literature & Esoterica: Inside, you find Early Greek Lyric Poetry, a Japanese Grammar handbook, Iris Murdoch’s The Message to the Planet, William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk Pattern Recognition, and a Polish edition of John Irving (Modlitwa za Owena).

Pop Culture, Memoirs & Sharp Humor: Right alongside the classics sit George Carlin’s Napalm & Silly Putty, William Shatner’s Up Till Now, Ellen DeGeneres, and Leslie Jordan’s My Trip Down the Pink Carpet.

Hyper-Specific Hobbies & Niche Guides: Bowl Like a Pro, Running for Mortals, Mountain Baking, and stacks of outdoor fishing magazines (Devils Lake Fishing).

Genre Escapes & Manga: Amish romances (Holding a Tender Heart, Her Amish Valentine) share space with modern fantasy, Free Comic Book Day manga (Journey to the West), and high-stakes political critique (Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis).

This case was found on the other end of the community from where the first box above was located. Different box, different purpose and audience. This box is geared to intellectually curious and highly diverse readers. This is not a curated collection, rather a community reflection where ideas keep circulting!

This little roadside treasure is less of a community landmark, and more like a warm extension from the front porch. It features hand-stamped or stenciled filigree, and the word ‘LIBRARY’ at the base. The box has an air of being a beloved, repurposed household cupboard. To lend order, a basket inside cinched with a satin ribbon contains adult reads, an unmistakable touch of Southern hospitality that conveys an idea of being a gift display, while Juvenile reads are stacked to the side.

As already mentioned, this book nook is a clean and intentionally mapped out for 2 audiences: toddler bedtime, and relaxed adult downtime.

Stroller Crowd: Packed with sturdy board books and early-reader treasures like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Baby Touch and Feel: Animals, The Story of Rosa Parks, Good Night, Baby Bear, and Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Pest.

Porch Rocker Reads: Nora Roberts’s The Rise of Magicks, John Sandford, Jude Deveraux, and Holly Black’s Book of Night.

This reveals the calm, suburban residential haven where family life revolves around littles. The share invites others in a similar walk to add new faves to their family rotation of bedtime reads, and parental escapes when the littles are asleep.

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There are many more, but here is just one more to consider from yet a totally new neighborhood location - The Knoxville Botanical Gardens.

This box doesn’t just sit next to nature, it is enveloped by it in a most purposeful way. The thick vines that drape it, don’t consume it but feel right at home embracing and nestling the weathered cedar shake roof and aged wood container. The artistic illusion of painted books on the door, indicate clearly the contents contained, but do so with natural earth-tones. A discreet official Little Free Library charter sign can be seen resting under the eave, peeking out just so slightly.

The contents are a treasure trove of childhood wander and field excursions that perfectly mirror the idea of the Botanical Garden itself.

• Learning, Civics & Social Skills: Munro Leaf’s classic Manners Can Be Fun, What Can I Say? A Kid’s Guide to Super-Useful Social Skills, It Happens to Everyone, and educational library bindings like America the Beautiful: Nebraska.

• Playful School-Age Fiction & Activities: Titles like Gymnastics by Amanda Durant, 38 Ways to Entertain Your Grandparents, Heena Baek’s Moon Pops, Zip, Zip... Homework, and I Was a Third Grade Science Project.

• Pocket Board Books: A small stack of miniature board books rests neatly in the corner, sized perfectly for toddlers pausing by a garden bench.

Obviously, this is an outdoor learning nook. This box was found in an area concocted to provide the perfect reading space - nice large rocks to curl up with a book and get lost in the beauty around you. I find the correlation of gardens and grandparents a perfect place to uncover a great book with grandkids!

The first two places were in the communities of Fairmont and Emoriland of Knoxville.

The third location was found around the corner from where we have been staying, near Fountain City. The fourth—as mentioned—is at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens.

These custom-made book boxes serve as far more than a simple roadside dispensary for forgotten paperbacks, I believe they are unintentional neighborhood self-portraits. Whether mimicking the sharp gables and quiet pride of a classic Dutch Colonial, bustling with the eclectic cross-pollination of an active academic corridor, welcoming evening strollers with the domestic warmth of a ribbon-tied basket, or quietly yielding to the living greenery of a public botanical sanctuary, each structure and its contents reflects the pulse of the hands that built and visited it. Before you open the book’s cover, the box itself has already begun revealing the heart and motivations of the community where it resides.

Do you have a neighborhood Free Book Library near your home? What does it say about where it resides? Take a peek inside and see what it has to share!

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A couple other neighborhood free book boxes we’ve seen recently…

Is this even possible? And if so, how do we do it?

I know, I have so much catching up to do on where we have been and what we have been doing - but when you hit the ground running and try to make sense of the lay of the land (and work f…

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Playlists for me are far more than a collection of songs.

Think for yourself back to pivotal songs in your own life. Are they a soundtrack to something special? Something attached to a memory (good or bad) that feels enhanced by the song? Does hearing that song take you back to that moment - where you can feel the temperature, smell the air, and taste th…

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We have 8 kids between us (blended, grown, mostly paired off). We asked them each for songs. What came back was a portrait of who they are.

47 songs. 3 hours and 9 m…

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…

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First leg of the flight was from Charlotte to London’s Heathrow airport. Before getting of the fligh…

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While I have not had time to share the whole story here on Substack, I want to begin feeding you some of …

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Video overviews are yet to come - but to see our day by day in posts & reels - be sure and follow our Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/awtysykes/

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It is 8:15 as I sat to my open laptop to jot down a page from the European experience. We are currently in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, an Alpine Ski town in Bavaria, southern Germany. The alps are viewable f…

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Today we not only leave this country for great adventures, and make memories to last our lifetimes. But today, Trish and I leave Moore County, North Carolina (as our home) and set out to do this crazy thing we feel called to.

It is an exciting thing, at times a daunting thing, and often a very hard thing. I taught my kids to embrace heard things - and not let their challenge faced define you. But rather, to push thru the challenge and declare - “I am just the sort of person who does hards things.”

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It’s not glamorous.

There are boxes everywhere. Labels like “car box” and “bathroom in a box” and one that just says “to be determined.” The living room is a staging area. The desk is gone. The walls are bare. And somewhere in the middle of it all, Trish is folding laundry with surgical precision while Brian’s pile looks like it lost a fight.

Everything needs a ‘new address’

One of the things nobody tells you about leaving: the hardest part isn’t the big stuff. It’s that things don’t have a home anymore unless you tell them where to go.

The desk that lived in the office for years? Storage. The exercise bench? Fletcher and Jaden’s. The old vacuum? Going to Goodwill — with a new one to my son Mat, because new vacuums smell better than old ones and that’s just true.

Every single object in the house is in mid-sentence right now. It belongs somewhere. We just have to decide where.

What’s coming with us

Three suitcases. That’s it. At least for the month-and-a-half travel

Spring and summer clothes. Toiletries. Tech, cords, office supplies. Arts and crafts — because Trish is always going to need a place to sketch. A travel jewelry bag with little separators for whatever she decides to collect along the way.

I just finished my book, so the hard drive stays accessible until the last possible moment. (I still have to make the digital vesion

And one pair of brand new shoes — that don’t get worn until they set out for Germany. That’s my rule. New chapter, new shoes.

The things worth mentioning

The laptop bag I have been using — a Mystery Ranch backpack/sling combo that Matt and Wes gave me — gets a genuine unsolicited endorsement mid-walkthrough. Converts from backpack to sling. Magnetic latch. Multiple pockets. Turns out the boys know their dad well. (They have the BEST taste!)

The junk journal on the table isn’t coming. I am leaving it behind and starting a fresh one on the road. New pages for new places.

And Herschel — our dog — has a stuffed animal named Tyrone who needed some repairs. A patch on the face. A little heart on the booty. A new hole that Herschel helpfully started. The chaos of departure does not pause for stuffed animal surgery. You just do it on the kitchen table between boxes.

Coming together

It looks like chaos. It is chaos. But it’s purposeful chaos — and there’s a difference.

Most of it is moving. Most of the decisions are made. The boxes have labels. The suitcases have a plan. The new shoes are waiting.

22 days.

Watch the full Saturday walkthrough above — including the laundry folding comparison you did not ask for but absolutely need to see.

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