captronk

I'd like to ride along the Sounth Holsten River to Knoxville along the TN river to St. Louis. There really isn't any structured route of course. So I have to make my own route. Anyone know of what roads I should avoid? Am I allowed on roads that use on-off ramps?

pdlamb

U.S. 11W is the straightest shot that keeps you close to the Holston River from Kingsport to Knoxville (S. Holston joins the N. Holston in Kingsport, of course). IIRC you'll cross Cherokee Lake 7 times going down that stretch. Traffic is much reduced since they finished I-81 (OK, that was 44 years ago), but there's still some high speed local traffic, especially near Kingsport and Knoxville at rush hour. The road still had a lot of two lane stretches last time I drove it, lots of blind curves, and TNDOT apparently doesn't recommend it (see https://www.tn.gov/content/tn/tdot/multimodal-transportation-resources/bicycle-and-pedestrian-program/bicycle-routes.html). Check out the suitability maps linked from that page. You might take 375 south from Bean Station and pick up 11E around Jefferson City.

You can't ride the interstates in Tennessee. There are some other roads that will have on-off ramps you can ride, and some of those have wide shoulders and good sight lines (thinking of 411 from Maryville to Madison, for example).