Most tree services/arborists will dump wood chips for free if in your neighborhood....otherwise, they have to pay to dispose of them. Same with the companies that do utility right-of-way trimming, like Asplundh.

Or you can cover the path with bark mulch if you want but why pay for something when you can very likely get the chips for free? But if you go with a bark mulch, use a natural colored one, not red dyed. Dyed mulches are hidious and look artificial....like someone spray painted your landscape!!

I get mine at the transfer station. Kind of crummy looking for decorative type purposes. It’s free, though.

Check with your city! Here, we can load up free chips at the city landfill if we have a driver's license showing an address inside the city.

Personally I'd prefer the free wood chips in whatever form i could get them for this use. That said, a couple of years ago I needed to get some bark mulch, and I got larch bark chips (in my case was very cheap); it had a pleasing dark red-brown colour. If I really needed to mark out a path, I'd go for that over any of the stuff that is dyed. Note, actually go and get a sample or take a look and see if it's what you want - i.e. don't just rely on the names like larch or red cedar or whatever - it's my experience that the taxonomy of trees and plants and especially leftovers like wood chips can differ from place to place and are often just wrong.

(This is a little off topic but I discovered 'pine nuts' in some languages are called 'cedar nuts', which I was taught are poisonous. It turns out it's just a misnomer in that language, the most common pine nuts are from a tree that is commonly called a cedar but is actually a pine. BUT: in the course of trying to figure this out, I found out almost all 'cedars' in North American English are not actually cedar, but other conifers - red cedar for example is a juniper, many others are cypress. I still don't actually know if 'cedar nuts' are bad...)

You can call your electric utility and see if they have a wood chip program. They may put you on a list for dropoff, or they may have a yard where you can go scoop your own, or both.