Best route to travel Las Vegas to Florida (Gulf Coast)

[Sunshine719]

Hello, We will be traveling to the Gulf coast of Florida from Las Vegas in a couple weeks for a travel assignment and would like to know the best route to take. We are not in a hurry, but would like to get there within 5 or 6 days max. We don’t need to travel through anywhere of particular interest, but it is important that we travel through areas that have decent stops for BR breaks, food, gas and lodging (preferably La Quinta or other decent, pet friendly hotels as we are traveling with dogs).

Thanks for your help!

[DonnaR57]

Hi, and welcome to RTA!

Seriously, there are few routes that would not have spots for bathroom breaks, dog-walking, and amenities. Almost any interstate or US highway would have those abilities. A lot of folks prefer to travel on US and state highways, and my husband prefers the interstate slabs because he's so used to those.

One thought would be to take US 93 down to I-40. From anywhere along I-40, you could start to head south - at Amarillo, OKC, Little Rock, or Memphis. It's around 2100 miles (calculating to Tallahassee, so YMMV a little), so that could be 5 comfortable days plus time to stop anywhere.

Others will chime in with routes, I'm sure.


Donna

[Southwest Dave]

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

You won't have any trouble finding points to rest, eat and sleep along the way and without a desire to stop at places along the way, 5 days would be a pretty comfortable pace. The quickest option looks to be I-40 to Amarillo, around Dallas to Jackson and south to Mobile and I-10. If you click on the Lodging link in the green tool bar above you can search Pet friendly hotels in different locations. You could look around the following locations to even your trip out at Gallup NM, Amarillo TX, Shreveport LA(West of), Mobile AL and on to your destination.

[Sunshine719]

We will be traveling across country next week, from Las Vegas to FL, and are considering two different routes, depending on the weather (either from Texas through Jackson MS, south and over or Texas down through LA and over). We will decide depending on the weather. That said, what is the best weather app or website for this? Is any one better than another, in terms of accuracy and details?

Moderator: We find it helpful if you keep all of your posts in one thread for one trip. (see note from Donna below.

[DonnaR57]

One of the moderators will probably move this thread into the other one you started. But to answer the questions...

Two apps can be your "best apps" for travel (IMHO). One is Gas Buddy. You can look ahead via a list or a map, to see where your next fuel stop will be. You can set it for one of 6 different types of fuel, depending on what your vehicle takes (UNL, Super UNL, Premium, Diesel, UNL 88 and E85).

The other is the Weather Channel. When we are traveling, I look ahead at the cities we'll be passing through, and at the radar. I don't have the Premium version, just the freebie one.

Hope this helps.

Donna

[Mark Sedenquist]

And just for planning purposes, you might find our Fuel Cost Calculator useful.

For weather, I prefer the WUnderground app -- mostly because it provides real time satellite images and I can drill down for details like winds aloft and other weather details.

In the western states and especially in Nevada and California I like the CalTrans App -- for checking slowdowns on the roadways. It provides real-time updates from the CHP (California Highway Patrol) for any working incident in California and the technology also works pretty well for other states. The actual app (not the link above) shows the location of web cams so you can see yourself drive by -- if you find that interesting.

And, of course, the generic Maps apps can be helpful too.

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

As to route.

I don't know where in Florida you are going -- but using Tampa, the most direct route would be 2325 miles and six days of travel would let you break this into 400 mile travel days, which is reasonable and would also allow for ample dog walking and some limited off-the-most-direct-route-rambling.

Nearly all of the highways between Las Vegas and Tampa have La Quintas on them or are reasonably close.

But in broad strokes, the shortest distance route would be:
US-93 to I-40 to US-287 to US-380 to I-35E to US-80 to I-20 to US-98 to I-10 to I-75 to Tampa.

And just as an example using such a route, we have published short articles about 105 different attractions found within five (5) miles of that route. Click on any of the flags to found on that route.

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

One more possibly helpful tool for your planning...

We have about 1000 RTA Library Maps saved on this site that you can download for free, edit and re-save with whatever information you want. For instance you could load a bunch of La Quinta Hotels and use them as waypoints for creating your route.

Easiest way to see the some of the RTA Library Maps:

1. Go to the Advanced Maps page

2. Look for this phrase: "Search for RTA Library Maps within" and you will see a pull-down menu for a search radius from 10 to 500 miles.

3. Click on any point on the map where you might imagine that you'd be driving. For instance, choose 200 miles and click on Flagstaff.

4. That returns a list of 95 RTA Maps (See the list in the left-hand side of the page) and you could click on any of them and see if one of them is a route that you want to use.

5. For instance, I clicked on "West AZ-NM SST 10 Phoenix to Flagstaff," and found a scenice route with a bunch of attractions on it.

You can do the same thing for any city or state or place anywhere between Las Vegas and the Gulf Coast.

6. If you want to save it into your account. You would put a name in the blank "Map Name" and click save.

7. Another helpful tool is the radius circles. Set them for 400 miles and click any city and see what possible routes and places to stop would be 400 miles from the starting location.

Mark

[Sunshine719]

One of the moderators will probably move this thread into the other one you started. But to answer the questions...

Two apps can be your "best apps" for travel (IMHO). One is Gas Buddy. You can look ahead via a list or a map, to see where your next fuel stop will be. You can set it for one of 6 different types of fuel, depending on what your vehicle takes (UNL, Super UNL, Premium, Diesel, UNL 88 and E85).

The other is the Weather Channel. When we are traveling, I look ahead at the cities we'll be passing through, and at the radar. I don't have the Premium version, just the freebie one.

Hope this helps.

Donna

It helps tremendously, thank you!

[Sunshine719]

Thank you so much, this is very useful info. I did download an app called InRoute, but its not exactly doing everything I thought it would, so between the maps you alerted me to, and the weather apps, we should be good. We are headed to the gulf coast of FL, about an hour or so south of Tampa, so your routes are spot on. Thank you so much!