Some Tennessee travel treasures are worth a trip off the beaten path.
Tennessee’s major cities are magnets for group tours, offering a wealth of attractions, lodging and dining opportunities. They are destinations unto themselves, but they can also be home base for jaunts outside the metro areas.
This itinerary features some of the lesser-known treasures surrounding Tennessee’s biggest cities. Plan at least five days in the Volunteer State to make the most of these destinations.
Jonesborough’s Storytelling Festival and Gray Fossil Site
Jonesborough is small, with a population of only 6,500, but it has two huge claims to fame. Established in 1779, it is Tennessee’s oldest town, and it is the “Storytelling Capital of the World.” Both accolades attract visitors year-round. The biggest blowout is in October, when thousands celebrate the world’s oldest art form at the National Storytelling Festival. Storytelling occurs other times, too, with the Teller-in-Residence program at the International Storytelling Center, the Jonesborough Storytellers Guild, the Jonesborough StoryTown Radio Show, and during weekend special events and festivals.
Groups can combine storytelling and exercise during walking tours through Jonesborough’s carefully preserved city streets, led by Heritage Alliance guides who wear costumes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Visitors learn how the town was briefly capital of the State of Franklin, which functioned as the 14th state but was never recognized by Congress, and how a young Andrew Jackson practiced law here.
In the same county, history much older than Jonesborough’s is the focus of the Gray Fossil Site, which operates in conjunction with the Hands On! Discovery Center, an all-ages science center.
A state highway construction crew chanced upon the fossil site, which held many surprises, including identification of two extinct species new to science, a badger and a red panda. Tennessee’s governor rerouted the highway, and the paleontology work continues to this day. Groups can observe scientists working on the actual dig from May through October and peer inside their working lab throughout the year. Tapirs, mastodons and rhinos are among their finds.
While you’re nearby: Nashville is known for country music, but the genre was born in Bristol. The Birthplace of Country Music Museum celebrates a 1927 recording session known as “The Big Bang.”
Rugby’s Historic Village and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
Rugby, a British-accented village founded in 1880, is west of Knoxville on the Cumberland Plateau. British author Thomas Hughes inspired the utopian colony that survived for only a decade. Preservation and restoration work over the last half-century has saved its history and several of more than 60 Victorian buildings. Visits begin with Rugby’s award-winning history film, “The Power of a Dream,” and continue with a walking tour that includes the Thomas Hughes Library — believed to be America’s oldest completely preserved public lending library — and picturesque Christ Church Episcopal. The Haunted Village Lantern Tour delivers a detailed history of the social experiment intended to provide a class-free, agricultural community for younger sons of English gentry.
Rugby’s Commissary store offers Appalachian crafts and antiques, and a mile west of the village is a popular food option, the R.M. Brooks Store, a local favorite since 1920 for burgers, barbecue and ice cream. The entire Rugby experience is set amid the natural terrain of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and the Rugby State Natural Area.
East of Knoxville is another historic destination, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. Bison, Native Americans and then European colonists traversed this key gap in the Appalachian Mountains that became known as the Gateway to the West. In 1775, Daniel Boone was paid to blaze a trail through the gap. Between 200,000 and 300,000 people followed it into the interior of the continent. The 24,000-acre park includes a point where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia meet. Park attractions include the mountaintop Hensley Settlement which thrived for 40 years in the early 1900s.
While you’re nearby: Downtown Knoxville bustles with activity. Market Square is full of shops and restaurants, and the landmark Sunsphere from the 1982 World’s Fair continues to offer spectacular views.
The Lost Sea and Mayfield Dairy in Athens
Everybody screams for ice cream, and travel planners can fulfill that desire at the Mayfield Dairy Farms Visitor Center in Athens, halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville. T.B. Mayfield Jr. started the farm in 1910, and his little operation grew into one of the South’s most popular dairy brands. The visitor center is at a bustling production plant, not a dairy farm, and tours begin with the making of Mayfield’s signature yellow jugs. Milk production is a blur of activity at 200,000 gallons a day, including filling 3 million half-pint containers every week destined for school cafeterias.
Next is the ice cream facility, where production lines fill everything from pint containers to 3-gallon cartons ready for ice cream parlors. Daily capacity is 42,000 gallons of any of Mayfield’s 60 flavors. When Moose Tracks ice cream is made, the plant needs 11,000 pounds of chocolate a day. The reward at tour’s end is a scoop of ice cream. Look for Mayfield’s costumed mascot, Maggie the Cow. It takes 20,000 real Maggies to keep the operation going.
A quite different activity is 11 miles away in Sweetwater. The Lost Sea Adventure is a cave tour with a bonus — a boat trip on the largest underground lake in America. The three-quarter-mile trip is gentle on the way down and steep on the way up. The 4.5-acre lake is 140 feet below the surface, and glass-bottom boats powered by electric motors ease through its calm waters. The massive, stocked trout swimming deep underground grow large because of regular feeding and the absence of predators.
The cave itself is full of stories: jaguar bones from thousands of years ago, prehistoric human visitation, Civil War saltpeter mining, a teenager’s discovery of the lake in 1905 and rare crystalline formations called anthodites.
While you’re nearby: Three signature attractions on Lookout Mountain — the Incline Railway, Ruby Falls and Rock City — will forever be popular for Chattanooga tours.
Franklin’s Historic Square and Beechcraft Museum
Franklin is only 25 miles from downtown Nashville, but it is worlds apart. Founded in 1799, it is among Tennessee’s oldest communities and is dripping in history. Its photogenic downtown is vibrant — pleasantly lacking much intrusion from national brands — with local restaurants, shops, art galleries and historic homes. Travel + Leisure put it on its “10 Best Main Streets in the USA” list, and Visit Franklin spokesman Matt Maxey compares it to a Norman Rockwell painting or a Hallmark Channel movie setting, which it has been.
Franklin is a breeze for dispersing your group for walkabouts. At one end is Landmark Booksellers, a cozy bookstore in a building that Davy Crockett, Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson all visited, and the Moore-Morris History and Culture Center of Williamson County, which occupies a 1905 structure built as the town jail. The town square showcases detailed plaques telling “the Fuller Story,” the harsh realities of a slave economy, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. A courthouse statue installed in 2021 honors the 300 formerly enslaved men who enlisted in the Union army there. The Franklin Theatre, a 300-seat movie palace from 1937 and restored in 2001, is farther down Main Street.
An aviation surprise awaits visitors south of Franklin. The Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma is a sprawling collection of hangars devoted to Beechcraft airplanes. Walter Beech, the popular airplane’s namesake, was born nearby. He flew a glider he designed in 1905 and was a World War I pilot and a test pilot after the war. He, his wife and three others created their airplane company in Wichita in 1936 and gained fame with their speedy Beechcraft Staggerwing biplane. The museum has 39 Beechcraft planes and seeks to acquire an example of every model built.
While you’re nearby: The Grand Ole Opry is important on any Nashville itinerary. That’s especially true in 2025, the famous radio show’s 100th year on the air.
Union City’s Reelfoot Lake and Discovery Park of America
In a state of natural wonders, Reelfoot Lake has the weirdest origin. The 15,000-acre lake, Tennessee’s only natural lake, resulted from earthquakes over the winter of 1811-1812 that forced the Mississippi River to flow backward and flood a cypress swamp. Graceful, sometimes eerie-looking cypress trees surround the lake that has became a destination for waterfowlers, anglers and birders.
A few decades ago, bald eagles wintered here and became a visitor attraction, but the climate has changed, and the impressive birds now are year-round residents. Approximately 150 nesting pairs are in the lake’s vicinity. Pontoon boat cruises, especially sunset cruises, are popular. Reelfoot Lake State Park offers a program with its collection of raptors that cannot survive in the wild. For a big meal, check out Boyette’s Dining Room, a regional destination for catfish, country ham and fried chicken since 1921.
Nearby, Discovery Park of America is a manmade attraction in Union City, a gift from Robert Kirkland, the founder of Kirkland’s Home stores, to his birthplace region. His international travel sparked the idea of a place where people could see sights and be exposed to ideas beyond the limitations of where they lived.
Discovery Park’s centerpiece is a 100,000-square-foot building with nine exhibit galleries. Displays delve into natural science, outer space, Native American history, pioneer settlement, military equipment, aviation and historical figures. There’s even an earthquake simulator as a tribute to the quakes that formed Reelfoot Lake.
While you’re nearby: Memphis means music and food. Explore the music scene at the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum and Stax Museum of American Soul Music. To please your palate, sample barbecue at Rendezvous, Blues City Cafe and Central BBQ, or go for the poultry at Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken.