North America · Touring guide
A music-led route where the order, number of nights and internal travel deserve thought.
Is it right for you?
A strong fit for
Music, history and rail or fly-drive touring.
We would think twice for
Travellers who want beaches or big-sight sightseeing, because the South's treasures are stories, songs and food, and they reveal themselves at driving pace rather than from a tour bus.
What we would want you to know
Trying to add every city can weaken the whole trip.
We’ve been here
Of the cities on this route, Nashville is the one we have seen in person, most recently in September 2025, and most of the Deep South routes we build for clients start there. After that, the planning is all about pacing: how many nights each music city needs, and where to break the drive so the Delta is savoured rather than rushed.
The route
Nights 1 to 3
The Country Music Hall of Fame and the Studio B tour, a daytime visit to the Ryman, a night at the Opry and a weekday afternoon in the honky-tonks of Broadway.
Nights 4 and 5
Drive west to Memphis for Graceland on the first morning, Sun Studio and Stax the next day, the Civil Rights Museum, and ribs before a night on Beale Street.
Night 6
Follow Highway 61 south to Clarksdale for the Delta Blues Museum, the crossroads and a Friday or Saturday night in a juke joint, with a side trip to the B.B. King Museum in Indianola.
Night 7
Stop at Vicksburg's battlefield on the way, then an evening on the bluffs above the river and a mansion tour the next morning.
Nights 8 to 10
Take the River Road for a morning at Whitney Plantation, hand the car back in the city, and give the last three nights to New Orleans itself.
An idea to react to, not a fixed package. We shape the real thing around your dates, your pace and what the flights are doing that season.
Map and stops
Country music's working capital, with the Opry, the Ryman, the Country Music Hall of Fame and RCA Studio B, where Elvis recorded more than two hundred songs. Downtown hotels are dear and Broadway is at its rowdiest at weekends, so we often look at quieter neighbourhoods such as The Gulch or Midtown, and at midweek nights.
A river city of soul and rock and roll: Sun Studio, the Stax Museum, Graceland and Beale Street, plus the National Civil Rights Museum. Downtown is the easiest base, walkable to Beale Street and the river. Graceland is a drive south of the centre, and some districts feel rough, so use taxis at night and never leave anything in a parked car.
The flat cotton country south of Memphis where the blues began, with Clarksdale as its unofficial capital: juke joints, the Delta Blues Museum and the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49. Rooms are simple, from converted sharecropper shacks to small inns, and the towns are quiet midweek, so we time a stay for a weekend.
A small river town on high bluffs above the Mississippi, famous for its pre-Civil War mansions, many of them built on cotton and slavery. Several are open to visit, and the better tours now tell the whole story. Vicksburg's battlefield makes a good stop on the way down from the Delta.
The route's finish, reached along the River Road past the old sugar plantations. We end here because nothing after it could compete, and because it lets you hand back the car and fly home on an open-jaw ticket. The city has its own page on this site, with our advice on where to stay.
Weather and seasons
On a route that runs from Tennessee almost to the Gulf, the season shifts as you drive south. April and May, and again October, are the months we plan around: April in Nashville averages about 21°C and October 23°C, the month the Delta's cotton fields turn white before the harvest. In July the heat and humidity build all the way down, with Nashville near 32°C while the Delta runs hotter still. Winter is quiet and cheaper, but January nights in Nashville average -1°C, and ice storms occasionally close Tennessee roads. Spring also brings severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings, so keep an eye on local alerts and act on them.
Worth timing a trip around
The town's grand houses open their doors for tours each spring, a tradition since the 1930s. Book rooms early, because the town is small and fills quickly.
Blues on dozens of stages and in juke joints across town, day and night, alongside a small-town fair. Every bed in Clarksdale is taken, so book the best part of a year ahead.
Four days of country music, with free daytime stages downtown and big-name stadium shows at night. Hotels fill and prices climb for the whole week.
Graceland marks the anniversary of Elvis's death on 16 August with a week of events, ending in a candlelit procession past his grave through the night of 15 August.
| Month | High | Low | Rain |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 9°C | -1°C | 81 mm |
| February | 12°C | 1°C | 116 mm |
| March | 17°C | 4°C | 158 mm |
| April | 21°C | 8°C | 123 mm |
| May | 26°C | 14°C | 85 mm |
| June | 30°C | 18°C | 100 mm |
| July | 32°C | 21°C | 99 mm |
| August | 31°C | 19°C | 101 mm |
| September | 28°C | 16°C | 104 mm |
| October | 23°C | 10°C | 121 mm |
| November | 16°C | 3°C | 49 mm |
| December | 12°C | 1°C | 102 mm |
Temperatures are 2015 to 2024 averages from NOAA records for Shelby Bottoms Nature Ctr, 5 km away at 123 m. Rainfall is from the same station and shows the typical (median) month, so one freak storm does not skew it.
| Month | High | Low | Rain |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 17°C | 8°C | 108 mm |
| February | 20°C | 11°C | 120 mm |
| March | 24°C | 14°C | 63 mm |
| April | 26°C | 17°C | 207 mm |
| May | 30°C | 21°C | 199 mm |
| June | 33°C | 24°C | 180 mm |
| July | 34°C | 25°C | 259 mm |
| August | 34°C | 25°C | 184 mm |
| September | 32°C | 24°C | 178 mm |
| October | 28°C | 19°C | 71 mm |
| November | 22°C | 14°C | 148 mm |
| December | 20°C | 11°C | 112 mm |
Temperatures are 2015 to 2024 averages from NOAA records for New Orleans Audubon, 7 km away at 6 m. Rainfall is from the same station and shows the typical (median) month, so one freak storm does not skew it.
Things to do
The long-running country radio show, broadcast live several nights a week with stars and newcomers each playing a couple of songs. It moves from the Opry House to the Ryman for part of the winter; book ahead, and add the backstage tour.
A former gospel tabernacle with church pews, home of the Opry for three decades and still a much-loved concert hall. Take the daytime tour, then come back for a show if one is on.
Bars with live bands on every floor from late morning until the small hours, and usually no cover charge, because the musicians play for tips. Weekend nights are rowdy, so for the music itself go on a weekday afternoon.
Elvis Presley's home, with its Jungle Room and walls of gold records, and a large exhibition complex across the road with his cars and planes. Book a timed mansion tour, allow half a day, and arrive early in summer.
The small studio where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King cut early records, still recording today and shown on guided tours every hour. There is no booking, so arrive a little before the hour.
Built around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, it traces the struggle for civil rights from slavery onwards. It is powerful and detailed; give it at least three hours.
Clarksdale's museum, in the old freight depot, keeps the rebuilt cabin of Muddy Waters among its treasures. Nearby, the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 is where legend says Robert Johnson sold his soul for his guitar playing.
The site of the 1863 siege that split the Confederacy along the Mississippi, toured on a long driving loop past monuments and earthworks. Stop at the USS Cairo, an ironclad gunboat raised from the Yazoo River.
A River Road plantation museum told from the viewpoint of the people enslaved there, with memorials that name them and many thousands more enslaved across Louisiana. It is sobering and thoughtfully done; book your visit ahead and give it a morning before driving on to New Orleans.
A two-lane parkway through woods and farmland from the edge of Nashville to Natchez, with no lorries, no billboards and a low speed limit. It is the slow, green alternative to the interstate, and it passes Tupelo, where Elvis was born.
Food and drink
Fried chicken brushed with cayenne-laced oil and served on white bread with pickles. Heat levels run from mild to painful, so order one level lower than your pride suggests.
The Nashville canteen lunch: one meat and three sides from a steam table, where macaroni cheese counts as a vegetable and cornbread comes as standard.
Pork ribs slow-smoked and served dry with a spice rub, or wet with sauce. Pulled pork sandwiches come with the coleslaw piled inside the bun.
Spicy cornmeal and meat simmered in corn husks rather than steamed, a Delta tradition for more than a century, sold from roadside stands and small cafés.
Mississippi is farm-raised catfish country: fillets in a crisp cornmeal coat, with hushpuppies, coleslaw and a squeeze of lemon.
Filtered through sugar-maple charcoal before it goes into the barrel, which is what sets it apart from bourbon. Distilleries in Nashville and in Lynchburg run tours and tastings.
Money
This is one of the gentler-priced corners of America: rooms, food and music cost less than on the coasts, with Nashville the exception, because its downtown hotels have become expensive, above all at weekends. The fixed costs are an open-jaw flight and a one-way car hire, which carries a drop-off fee. Graceland, the studio tours and the Opry are the tickets to book ahead and the last we would cut. In the Delta, rooms are simple and cheap, and the music costs the price of a drink.
Flights and transfers
Fly into Nashville one stop from the UK, drive the music road south, and fly home from New Orleans on an open-jaw ticket: the route runs downhill with the river and never repeats a mile. It is the American road trip we recommend most often after the west coast.
Flights from UK airports
Route check September 2026. Some routes are seasonal and schedules change, so we confirm the live options when we quote.
Practical details
6 hours behind the UK
US dollar ($)
English
Type A and B, 120V
On the right
Safe to drink
Expected, around 18 to 20 percent at table service, and a few dollars in the bucket for any band you stay to hear
Entry for British passport holders
Visa. You need an ESTA (or a visa) before you fly, including if you are only changing planes in the USA. Apply through the official ESTA website.
Passport. Valid for your whole stay.
Summarised from the FCDO travel advice on gov.uk, checked 29 September 2026. Rules change: read the current entry requirements and the full travel advice before you go.
Questions we get asked
As a road trip, ten nights is about right, and we would not try it in less than a week. Driven straight, the route is a couple of long days, but the point is the stops: three nights in Nashville, two in Memphis, a night each in the Delta and Natchez, and three in New Orleans.
Partly. Nashville has no long-distance passenger trains, so the first leg to Memphis means driving or a coach. From Memphis, Amtrak's City of New Orleans runs once a day down through the Delta to New Orleans, a relaxing way to do the second half, though you miss the small towns along Highway 61.
Yes, for the music, but choose your moment. From Thursday to Sunday the strip is packed with hen and stag parties and party buses, and the bands play crowd-pleasers. Go on a weekday afternoon or early evening and you will hear serious musicians in quieter bars, often the best hour of a Nashville trip.
We point most people to Whitney Plantation, which tells the story from the side of the enslaved people who worked there rather than the families in the big house. Some of the other River Road houses now include more of that history, but tours vary a great deal, so we choose with care.
Yes. One-way hires between states are routine, though they carry a drop-off fee that varies by company and season, so we include it when we price the trip. Pair it with an open-jaw flight, into Nashville and home from New Orleans, and you never drive the same mile twice.
For anyone who loves the blues, it is the heart of the trip. Be ready for flat fields, struggling small towns, simple rooms and few restaurants, and time your night in Clarksdale for a Friday or Saturday, when the juke joints have live music.
Photographs
Also worth a look
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