We spent 16 days in Tennessee a couple of years ago--approximately 4 days in Memphis, 4 in Nashville, 4 in GSMNP, 2 in Chattanooga, 1/2 day in Knoxville. If you were going to skip anything, I'd make it Knoxville. We didn't go to Franklin.

Memphis-
Beale Street, Peabody Hotel Ducks, Elvis/Graceland
Best spots to eat is Blues City(imop). I also really like Gus's Fried Chicken(inexpensive), Rendevouz, Central BBQ, and perhaps Neely's. Peabody has a great Sunday Brunch that is expensive.

Nashville_
The Hermitage(Andrew Jackson Home), Country Music Hall of Fame, perhaps Grand Ole Opry.
Best spots for dining-The Loveless Cafe. Consider trying popsicles at Las Paletas(they are very good)

Gatlinburg/Great Smoky Mnt-
Cades Cove
Good Hikes at Abram Falls, Laurel Falls, Grotto Falls, Clingmans Dome. None of these are that long or hard.
See Parrot Mountain in Gatlinburg. There are a ton of good zipline and even Zorb in Gatlinburg. I like Old Mill Pottery House, Cakes by Bakin Bishop(just sweets), Apple Barn(fritters!), Kilwin's Ice Cream. And for some reason, I really like the Hard Rock Cafe in Gatlinburg, it just seems better than the rest of them to me.

On the other side of the national park is The Biltmore. You could do it if you drove thru the Smoky's

What time of year will you be here? That makes a huge difference in terms of outdoor recommendations.

I grew up in Knoxville - they've done a lot downtown, and it would be fun for an overnight, but in terms of tourist attractions there isn't all that much. Chattanooga is a great small city (the Tennessee Aquarium there is amazing) - if it fits in your itinerary, it would be great for a night or two.

I live in Nashville now. Top tourist attractions: Country Music Hall of Fame, Ryman Auditorium (both great even if you don't care for current country music - I don't), Opryland Hotel/Grand Ole Opry (don't stay there - it's at least 20 minutes from downtown or anything else you want to do), honky-tonks on Broadway, the Bluebird Cafe. The Frist Center is our art museum; there's no permanent exhibit, so you can see what's on when you'll be here. For nature, Radnor Lake state park is within Nashville city limits and is beautiful most of the year. You can also hike at Percy Warner park.

For Nashville restaurants, we have tons with new ones opening all the time. What sort of budget are you working with per meal? Any particular cuisine? The Catbird Seat is the "foodiest" place in town - you get a set menu and watch/talk to the chefs while they prep it, but it's quite expensive compared to the rest of our restaurants. Neighborhoods like East Nashville (Margot is delicious), 12 South, downtown/Germantown (City House) and Sylvan Park/Hillsboro Village have great places. For traditional Southern food, check out the Loveless, Monell's, and Arnold's.

In Memphis, I finally took the Sun Studio tour a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. The National Civil Rights Museum is really well done.

Franklin is more suburbs now than stereotypical small town, but the downtown area has some great shops and restaurants and is fun to walk around. You might also look into going to Lynchburg - take a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery (no samples - it's a dry county!) and eat at Miss Mary Bobo's boarding house.

I live in Tennessee (near Knoxville) - I have done the Nashville, Franklin, Memphis road trip with my sweet mother a couple of times. We love good food too! We loved Franklin for the historic sites - we really enjoyed the tour of the Battle of Franklin and we are not big historical buffs! There are several good restaurants in downtown Franklin - we liked the Boxwood Bistro. In Memphis we had good food at Flight and we had a nice lunch at the art museum up near the zoo. I would recommend Graceland (do it all if you are interested in Elvis at all) and we were so impressed with the tour at Sun Records.(make reservations) In Nashville we loved the tour of the Ryman (we got to sing on stage - trust me that we practiced "Jackson" all the way down to Nashville!!)The Country Music Hall of Fame is a great look at the entire history of country music with many interesting artifacts. We had really good food there too! We had a lovely lunch at Cheekwood and saw the beautiful grounds, I would recommend this visit. We just loved the whole trip. I would not go to Knoxville. What I do hope you are doing is zipping over to Asheville NC from the eastern end of Tennessee - it is SO worth a visit (great food, sites, and fun!). I hope you have a great trip in the South!

Thank you for replying, its a great help.

So i think i can give Knoxville a miss on this kind of trip. I knew Franklin was close to Nashville but i didn't know it was practically a suburb!

I will be in Tennessee in Spring most likely mid spring, i will be heading down the eastern southern states including North Carolina and Ashville is definitely on my list.

One of the toughest parts is figuring out how to approach Tennessee. I will also be visiting VA,NC,SC,GA,LA.

I heard that the drive between Nashville and Memphis is less then a highlight so i figured that i could do a portion of the Natchez trace and Shiloh (very early start) on that day.

I like the idea of 4 days in the Smokies we have only been to Acadia NP and Grand Canyon NP and both times we only had 1 day!

I think the NP are such a jewel of the US that i am really happy that this trip will give us time to get out of the car and start hiking (1st time hikers)!

So lets stick to Abrams suggestion (minus Knoxville) 4 days in Memphis, 4 in Nashville, 4 in GSMNP, 2 in Chattanooga.

I wonder if i could cut a day off each destination except Smokies? Would that be cutting it too tight?

Thanks again everyone a real help.

When we travel, I always think that I'll never get back to that place again (because there are so many places I want to visit), so we try to see a lot. Not everyone wants to travel like that.

You could probably see much of what Nashville and Memphis have to offer in three full days each.

In Memphis, we particularly enjoyed: Graceland, Belz Museum, Cotton Museum, Elmwood Cemetery, Mud Island, National Civil Rights Museum, Rock n Soul, Stax, Sun Studio, Gibson Guitar Factory tour, strolling Beale St in the evening.

In Nashville, Belle Meade, Hermitage, Grand Ole Opry (show & backstage tour), Ryman Auditorium, Cheekwood, Country Music Museum & Hall of Fame, Parthenon, Tennessee State Museum, strolling music area in the evening.

In Gatlinburg, we thought the town was awful--the epitome of tacky tourist trap, but the Park was fabulous.

My young adult daughter just got back from a road trip through Tennessee. Folks have already given you recommendations for a lot of the things she saw/did. However, one place that she visited on the way back home was Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. There are a LOT of choices for tours of this cave, ranging from the easy show cave-type tour to a tour on your hands and knees. They chose to do the Violet City Lantern Tour and thought it was great. She has done lots of cave tours (including several in Australia), but she said that Mammoth Cave was in a class of its own.

So if you can route yourself through Kentucky or if you can afford to take a day trip from Nashville, I would recommend a stop at Mammoth Cave National Park.

See: http://www.nps.gov/maca/index.htm

I think cutting a day from Memphis and Nashville is a good idea. Memphis and Nashville have a lot to do, but four days is quite awhile in either. Two is about right in Chattanooga, though, I think. spiro's hike suggestions in GSMP are what I'd recommend as well, though starting around mid-April (depending on the weather) you should be prepared for crowds. GSMP is the most visited national park we have! It doesn't get really bad in the actual park until late May or so, but traffic in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge is always bad.

Franklin is definitely a suburb - tons of people live there and commute to somewhere in Nashville or Brentwood. If you visit, it's not worth changing hotels.

What route you take for your whole trip depends a lot on where you go in each state. For example, if Asheville is your only stop in NC, that's a lot different than if you plan to go to the Outer Banks, Raleigh/Durham, etc.

You wouldn't have to spend that long in the smokies. I love love National Parks and have been to many of the US National Parks and Monuments. I don't think Smokies or Grand Canyon would make it in my top 10 list. So, not sure what other places you are spending, but a couple of days in smokies would probably be enough. There is a lot to do in Gatlinburg and then on the other side in North Carolina as well. If you like to backpack, then you might consider an extra couple of days and hike to Mt. LeConte.

I'm with Jent 2-3 days in Memphis and Nashville each would probably be plenty enough for most people.

You haven't mentioned Arkansas. There are actually a few good spots there. Buffalo National River is my favorite and odds are in April(best month really) the waterfalls there would be rolling pretty good. There are 4 or 5 very stunning waterfalls and many more that are good ones-but not in the awesome category. The Buffalo is the nations first National River.
The waterfalls there are better than anything in Smokys or Rockys, IMOP(when they are running).
Petit Jean State Park is good. You might also want to visit the Clinton Library in Little Rock.
Finally, Crystal Springs Museum is brand new and was provided by Helen Walton(walmart). It's free and there is nothing like it in the south that I am aware of. I think she pumped several hundred million into it.

I live in Oklahoma. Probably the only thing I would go out of my way for would be The OKC Bombing Memorial. There are some good spots to eat at in OK. I think I would skip Dallas too. I consider it a great place for shopping and dining, but not sure really of its tourist attractions. Stockyards and Museums would be good if you like that sort of thing.

Would skip Arkansas.

Would limit Memphis time - even with Beale Street and Graceland, it's a dicey town. It's #3 in violent crime rate in the US in cities > 250,000 people. St. Louis is #2; Nashville is #12. For comparison, the violent crime rate in Memphis is 2.5 times higher than New York.

We spent four days in Memphis and never felt a bit unsafe. We stayed downtown, and often walked around in the evening.

Yeah, you gotta really watch out on Beale Street and Graceland. No police, gangs everywhere, murders hourly. Really, how many violent crimes have been committed at Graceland?

Oh My Word, I'd be more concerned about having a car wreck getting to any of the cities that BigRuss mentions. I never so much as give it a thought about the crime rate in any of those cities. Crime against tourist just aren't that big of an issue. Sure, things can happen, but I wouldn't be that concerned.

Interesting. Stayed downtown in Memphis and definitely felt unsafe after dark. I'm from NYC and grew up there in the '80s. I'm also not small and was returning to the office with my former boss who's 6-6, 300+ and could scare the white off jasmine rice. Sooooooooooo thinking there's some denial somewhere . . .

Never felt unsafe in Nashville: not downtown, not near Vandy, not ever.

The tourist areas of Memphis and Nashville are both safe as long as you use common sense. BigRuss, I'm not sure when you were last in Memphis, but they've done quite a lot with downtown over the last decade or so. I just went to a concert at Mud Island, parked downtown and walked, and felt fine.

Memphis *is*, however, a place where I would use a GPS and take care not to get lost. There are areas near both downtown and Graceland which you don't want to be in (though again, you'll be fine *in* downtown and at Graceland as long as you don't get drunk, pay attention, keep plenty of gas in the car - typical city advice). Same advice for Nashville, although getting lost generally isn't a cause for major concern here.

Yeah i have read up on the Memphis problems.

We are both fairly seasoned travelers and done plenty of high risk traveling with plenty of machine guns being waved around when we were in the mid east and through Egypt.

We will follow common sense traveling rules and if we get into a spot of trouble well i guess fingers crossed

As per usual if you go looking for trouble you will most likely find it.

Arkansas sounds good but extra stops are tight in the scheme of other states so far.

The only reason I mentioned Arkansas is that I think it is far prettier and much smaller than Texas(not sure how much desert you are seeing along the way in other states). It doesn't have the big cities or as much the cowboy appeal. I'm not into art/museums, but I doubt you would find much better than the Clinton Library or Crystal Bridges Museum in Texas(I haven't really done those in Texas, so can't say for sure). Living in Oklahoma for 45 year, I go to both Arkansas and Texas frequently. I would pick Arkansas any day for outdoor type things(yes, Big Bend and Guadalupe National Parks are nice). I like Texas far better for shopping and dining. I must say though that Hot Springs National Park in AR is my absolute least favorite national park. The Buffalo National River is one of America's best kept secret though.

<<I'm not into art/museums, but I doubt you would find much better than the Clinton Library or Crystal Bridges Museum in Texas>>

Seriously?

Downtown Dallas (DMA, Nasher, Perot) and arts district FW (FW Modern, Kendall, Amon Carter) contain top-end museums. So does Houston (MFA), which has a LARGE museum district.

If you don't KNOW what's in Texas, don't speculate that what's here cannot beat what's in Arkansas.

Jent: was last in Memphis in 2009.

Whoops, 2007.

For Memphis (see what I actually did later in the thread):

http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/possible-memphis-itinerary.cfm

http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/memphis-food-experience.cfm

If you stay downtown, you should be okay safety-wise -- was there for several days in early 2010. Like anyplace else, do your homework on good and bad parts of town beforehand. I think jent103 has it about right on the subject.

There's a good recently active thread around on Nashville right now:

http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/nashville-things-to-do-opinion-on-best-in-list.cfm

Big Russ, Crystal Bridges has been featured in the NY Times, Washington Post, etc. It is a "World Class Museum. Helen Walton(Walmart)sank 1.7 Billion Dollars in it. I have been to two of the places you list. In no way would I rank them any better than Crystal Bridges. Again, I don't know that much about it, so it would be strictly a personal opinion. I take it that you have been to Crystal Bridges?