Memphis Day Trips on a Budget: 4 Real Picks
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4 real day trips from a Memphis base
Memphis sits where Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas meet, and that corner of the map is the whole reason a Memphis base works for more than a city weekend. Four day trips are worth the drive: Tunica’s casino corridor, Clarksdale’s Delta blues pilgrimage, Oxford’s Ole Miss and Faulkner sites, and Shiloh’s Civil War battlefield. All four need a rental car or your own, none has a realistic transit option, and none of the prices below should be treated as fixed, check the official site before you commit a day to any of them.
| Day trip | Drive from Memphis | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Tunica, MS | roughly 30-45 minutes south | Casino corridor, Gateway to the Blues Museum, Tunica RiverPark |
| Clarksdale, MS | roughly 75-95 minutes south (Hwy 61) | The Delta blues pilgrimage: the Crossroads, Ground Zero Blues Club, Delta Blues Museum, Red’s Juke Joint |
| Oxford, MS | roughly 80-90 minutes southeast | Ole Miss, Rowan Oak (Faulkner’s home), Square Books, the town square |
| Shiloh National Military Park | roughly 2-2.3 hours east | A major 1862 Civil War battlefield with an interpretive center |
Which day trip gives the best return on a short trip?
Tunica, the closest at 30-45 minutes, fits into any spare afternoon and costs nothing beyond gas and whatever gaming budget you set. Clarksdale takes longer to reach but is the one worth planning a whole day, or a night, around: the Crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, the Delta Blues Museum, and Ground Zero Blues Club, which Morgan Freeman co-owns, all sit within walking distance of each other in a town small enough to see properly in a day.
Is Clarksdale worth an overnight instead of a day trip?
Yes, if the schedule allows it. The Shack Up Inn’s sharecropper-shack lodging is as much a reason to go as any single sight in town, and a day trip alone means driving 75-95 minutes each way for maybe four real hours in Clarksdale. Book a room ahead, especially around the Juke Joint Festival on April 11, 2026, when the town’s small lodging stock fills fast.
Why isn’t Nashville on this list?
Distance. Nashville runs 3-3.5 hours each way from Memphis, a 6-7 hour round trip that eats the entire day before you’ve seen anything. Treat it as its own separate trip or an overnight rather than folding it into a Memphis base itinerary. Memphis and Nashville do connect on paper, both anchor the wider Americana Music Triangle running through New Orleans, but that’s a road-trip framing, not a day-trip one.
One safety habit for every one of these drives
The same rule applies at a Ground Zero Blues Club parking spot, a Tunica casino lot, or a downtown Memphis street: the real risk is car break-ins, not violent crime, and Memphis Police’s own line for it is “Stow It, Don’t Show It,” nothing visible left in the car.
Read more: for the day-by-day version of these trips, see the 4-day and 7-day Memphis, Tennessee itineraries, or start with the main Memphis, Tennessee guide for the city-core costs these day trips build on.