The Sounds of the South Route Is the Best Road Trip for Music Lovers

While so much about travel is often centered around destinations, sometimes the greatest trips are all about the journey. Take the humble road trip, for example. Even though being somewhere new is inherently thrilling, road trips are also about watching the changing landscapes, the time you spend listening to your favorite songs, and the hours spent chatting with friends. The novelty of road trips makes them exciting—and in 2025, why not try a route that’s a little less traveled than others? 

Travel curation company Journeyscape released its list of the best “hidden gem” road trips in the United States. To determine its rankings, the company sourced route recommendations from Hertz as well as data like the number of stops, state line crossings, and distance involved for each journey. It then used Tripadvisor to evaluate each route based on the number of landmarks, highly rated restaurants, and hotels with at least four stars or higher available nearby. Finally, it gave each road trip a score out of 10.

After evaluating everything, it named The Sounds of the South route, which runs from the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to New Orleans, as one of the best road trips in the entire nation. 

“The Sounds of the South is a mecca for lovers of blues, country, rock and roll, and jazz music,” Journeyscape said in a press release obtained by Travel + Leisure. “Starting on Tennessee’s eastern border with Kentucky, you travel the length of the state to Memphis before heading down alongside the mighty Mississippi to the southern jazz capital of New Orleans. At 659 miles, this is one of the shorter journeys on this list, making it the perfect road trip if you are looking to immerse yourself in American culture without driving thousands of miles.”

Hertz added that the Sounds of the South trip stops at some truly standout music locations, including Dollywood and Graceland in Tennessee, Ground Zero Blues Club in Mississippi, and Louis Armstrong Park in Louisiana. 

For those on the hunt for a longer journey, Roller Coaster Tour, which runs between Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, and Jackson, New Jersey, stopping at 13 theme parks along the way, is a riveting pick. And the Appalachian Trail option, which goes between Suches, Georgia, and Monson, Maine, gives you plenty of time to finish that podcast you’ve been meaning to get around to.