Friday at half past five, an Ijams Park naturalist — the park's word is "fun-guide," and they know what they did — takes a small group out on the trails to look at the things growing on dead wood. It's the first walk of a four-part fall fungi series, and it's pitched squarely at people who have never done this: what a mushroom is, which parts are which, how to tell a fungus from a lichen, and how to start identifying what you find without eating anything to check.

★What you'll actually see

That depends on the week, and this week has been good to mushrooms. After a run of ninety-degree days with afternoon storms, the low, shaded ground at Ijams Park is about as productive as it gets in September: shelf fungi on the logs, small capped mushrooms in the leaf litter, and the lichens that were there all along on the bark. The walk is a mile and a half at the most, on real trail with roots and rocks, and it stops a lot.

★The practical part

Fifteen dollars, ages fourteen and up, and you need to register ahead — the page was still taking sign-ups Tuesday. Wear shoes you'd hike in, bring water, and expect a risk waiver at check-in. If Friday doesn't work, the same beginner walk repeats on September 20 and 27 and again October 18, when the fall crop is at its best.

Kern's is one building with four bars in it, and on a weekend when Tennessee plays at seven on a Saturday night, it helps to know which is which. The short version: a proper taproom with twenty taps and a private door, a rooftop with a patio the size of a small park, a market bar off the main hall, and a breakfast restaurant that keeps pouring cocktails until nine.

★The bars, one by one

Monday Night Proofing Co. is the anchor — the Atlanta brewery's Knoxville taproom, with twenty Monday Night taps running from barrel-aged stouts to lagers, a cocktail list, wine by the glass and the bottle, and its own entrance inside the hall so it keeps later hours than the food stalls: noon to midnight Thursday and Friday, eleven to midnight Saturday, eleven to nine Sunday. There's a service window onto the Great Lawn for live-music nights. Monday Night also staffs three smaller bars around the building — the High Proof Loft upstairs, the Market Bar, and the Scruff Bar. UpTop is the rooftop bar and the large patio, the one you go to when the weather cooperates. Peter's Market Bar, named for the baker who founded the place, pours draft beer, wine by the glass, cocktails and a zero-proof list. And Eggspectation, the all-day breakfast restaurant, runs a happy hour and nightly specials after the omelets are done, with Fridays billed as date night; the kitchen goes to nine, eight on Sunday.

★The food deal

Roni's Mac Bar is the newest stall and the one with a deal attached: download its app and five dollars comes off the order. It's a build-your-own macaroni counter with more than twenty toppings, open eleven to nine Sunday through Thursday and eleven to ten Friday and Saturday. Around it the hall runs the usual spread — T. Ralph's burgers, Mr. Rico tacos, Hemingway's Cuban sandwiches, Disco Chicken & Donuts, Zukku sushi, WokXville stir-fry, Ooh Lala Indian, Kandilige Ghanaian, AVA's wood-fired pizza — so a table of six can eat from six kitchens and drink from one bar.

★Saturday's game

Kern's sells its game-day setup by the section. Three hundred dollars reserves a lawn-patio section for up to twenty people with its own television; twenty-five hundred takes the small rooftop for seventy-five. The packages cover every Tennessee game, road games included, with a quarter of the price down at booking. For the seven o'clock kickoff at Georgia Tech the math works: the hall is open until eleven Saturday and the taproom until midnight, so the fourth quarter fits inside the building.

A sports grill on a home-game Saturday is a waiting room: everybody's there until they aren't. The night it earns the televisions is the away game, and Tennessee's first one is Saturday at seven, at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, on ESPN. Puckers — the Gatlinburg sports bar that took the old Mimosas room on Mimosa Avenue two weeks ago — gets its first real test of the wall.

★The game itself

Tennessee hasn't played at Bobby Dodd Stadium since 1986, and Georgia Tech is the kind of September opponent that turns a comfortable evening into a long one if the Vols start slow. It's a night kickoff, so it's a full evening: sit down at six, and the fourth quarter lands around half past ten.

★The practical part

Puckers takes reservations on Resy, and for a seven o'clock kickoff a booked table beats a hopeful one. Its weekday Pucker Hour — the dollar lager, the three-dollar wells — runs Monday through Friday from five to six and does not extend to Saturday, so don't plan the budget around it. Last Saturday the room opened at nine in the morning and ran until ten at night; this week's hours weren't posted as of Tuesday. If the wall is full, Kern's up Chapman Highway rents game-day sections with a television each — that's the next story down.

Storytime at the Nature Playscape has been a summer habit; Saturday it becomes a season. The fall run starts September 12 and goes sixteen Saturdays, ten to noon, at the Playscape by Mead's Quarry — the log-and-rope play area on the Island Home Avenue side of Ijams Park where the trees do the shade.

★How a morning runs

Somebody reads a nature story out loud to whoever's on the blankets. Then, on alternating weeks, the group either does a hands-on activity that goes with the book — a leaf craft, a bug hunt, that sort of thing — or simply turns the kids loose on the Playscape with an adult keeping a loose eye. It's two hours on the schedule; most families do one and drift.

★The fine print

It's free, and it will stay free through the whole run. The one cost is the Mead's Quarry lot, which is five dollars a car unless you're an Ijams member. Bring your own seat, your own water and a snack — there's no concession on that side of the park — and note that Sunday's fundraiser doesn't touch this end of Ijams at all.