Louisville to 30A Road Trip: Best Stops from Louisville to Seaside, Florida

Louisville to 30A covers about 620 miles and roughly 10 hours of driving, which makes it one of the more manageable drives to Seaside on this list — long, but doable in a single day if you're willing to leave early. It's also one of the simplest routes to navigate: you're on I-65 South for nearly the entire drive.

From Louisville, I-65 South runs through Elizabethtown, across the Tennessee line to Nashville, and on through Athens, Decatur and Cullman and Birmingham, Alabama. Near Montgomery, you'll leave I-65 for AL-55 South toward Andalusia and Florala, then pick up US-331 South for the final stretch into the Florida Panhandle and Seaside.

Good stops along the way

• QuikTrip, Elizabethtown, KY (I-65) — Kentucky's first QuikTrip, opened in 2025 just off the interstate — a good early stop before the long Tennessee stretch.
• Buc-ee's, Athens, AL (I-65) — just over the Tennessee line, one of four Alabama locations and usually worth the stretch break even with the crowds.
• Love's Travel Stop, Hope Hull, AL (I-65, Montgomery) — the last major travel center before you leave I-65 for the two-lane run to the coast.
• Murphy USA, DeFuniak Springs, FL (US-331) — final fuel stop on 331 before the last stretch into Seaside.

Because this route is almost entirely one interstate, the biggest slowdowns tend to be at the big-city interchanges — downtown Louisville's river bridges and Nashville's I-24/I-40/I-65 split — rather than anywhere rural. The one exception is the last hour or so on AL-55 and US-331, where services thin out considerably compared to the interstate miles that came before it.