Bike Tennessee: Part 1/6

We are proud to announce a new 6 part series with Bike Tennessee. This week we sat down with Jenni Veal and Shannon Burke. Jenni has been working to serve rural Tennessee communities for three years as the Rural Destination Development Manager with the TN Department of Tourist Development. In that role, she helped develop the state’s Bike Tennessee initiative in partnership with Shannon Burke. Jenni recently moved into a new position within the department to serve as the Outdoor Tourism Development Manager, in which she will continue to manage and grow that program, as well as additional outdoor tourism initiatives. Shannon Burke has been working with Tennessee Tourism since 2022 to curate bike routes across the state through the Bike TN initiative, initially providing 52 road cycling routes for publication on BikeTN.com and currently mapping gravel routes for publication in late 2025. Shannon has also been running bike tours since 2012 through his business Velo View Bike Tours. In 2019, Shannon created and currently serves as ride director for the Cycle Sequatchie Century & 3 Mtn Challenge, which is an annual one-day ride out of Dunlap, TN, with routes ranging from 15 to 100 miles. In 2020, Shannon founded and continues to operate Tennessee Gravel, which supports cycling adventures in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains east of Chattanooga through a downloadable route library, an individual time trial series, and an annual race/ride in Reliance, TN.