How many days does it take to drive from California to Kentucky?

33 hours, 35 minutes

Average driving speed: 67.6 mph
Kilometers per hour: 108.8 km/h
This is based on typical traffic conditions for this route.

Map of driving directions from California to Kentucky

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest.

More trip calculations

Driving time from California to Kentucky

How long is the drive from California to Kentucky? The total driving time is 33 hours, 35 minutes.

Your trip begins in the state of California. It ends in the state of Kentucky.

If you're planning a road trip, you might be interested in seeing the total driving distance from California to Kentucky.

You can also calculate the cost to drive from California to Kentucky based on current local gas prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

If you're meeting a friend, you might be interested in finding the city that is halfway between California and Kentucky.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the flight time from California to Kentucky.

Driving time calculator

Travelmath helps you find the driving time based on actual directions for your road trip. You can find out how long it will take to drive between any two cities, airports, states, countries, or zip codes. This can also help you plan the best route to travel to your destination. Compare the results with the flight time calculator to see how much longer it might take to drive the distance instead of flying. You can also print out pages with a travel map.

The driving time from Los Angeles, California to Kentucky (KY) is:

31 hours, 41 minutes

Average driving speed: 68.6 mph
Kilometers per hour: 110.4 km/h
This is based on typical traffic conditions for this route.

Map of driving directions from Los Angeles, CA to Kentucky

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest.

More trip calculations

How long is the drive from Los Angeles, CA to Kentucky? The total driving time is 31 hours, 41 minutes.

Your trip begins in Los Angeles, California. It ends in the state of Kentucky.

If you're planning a road trip, you might be interested in seeing the total driving distance from Los Angeles, CA to Kentucky.

You can also calculate the cost to drive from Los Angeles, CA to Kentucky based on current local gas prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

If you're meeting a friend, you might be interested in finding the city that is halfway between Los Angeles, CA and Kentucky.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the flight time from Los Angeles, CA to Kentucky.

Driving time calculator

Driving non-stop from Kentucky to California

How far is California from Kentucky? Here's the quick answer if you don't sleep at all, or you have a friend with you so each person can drive some of the way, letting you make the entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 579 miles or 932 km

Driving time: 9 hours, 44 minutes

This is a pretty long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from Kentucky to California

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Kentucky (KY) and California, Maryland. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.

Flight distance: 447 miles or 719 km

Flight time: 1 hour, 24 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 132 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.3x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/7th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.

Kentucky to California road trip

Realistically, you're not going to want to drive without stopping all the way from Kentucky to California, especially if you're the main driver. So let's say you're actually planning a road trip to California, and you need to stop along the way to rest. Plus if it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and find a hotel to stay overnight. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Based on the length of this trip, we think you could spread out this fun road trip over a number of days.

Road trip: 5 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 73.5 hours on the road with 4 overnights

Itinerary

Start at Kentucky.

Drive for about 5.5 hours, then stop in St. Louis and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 3.5 hours, then stop in Springfield (Missouri) and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 4 hours then stop in Oklahoma City. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 4 hours, then stop in Amarillo and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 4 hours then stop in Albuquerque. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 4 hours, then stop in Winslow (Arizona) and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 9 hours, then stop in Bakersfield and stay overnight.

Finally, drive for about 40 hours and arrive at California.

To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:

Kentucky to California airports and flights

In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Blue Grass Airport (LEX)

Arrival airport: Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 76 minutes

Getting to your destination: 143 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from LEX to DCA and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 1 hour, 24 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Kentucky to California including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 7 hours

To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:

How far is it the other way?

The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from California to Kentucky, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know Kentucky, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Kentucky!

How much would it cost to drive from California to Kentucky?

The total cost of driving from California to Kentucky (one-way) is $423.05 at current gas prices. The round trip cost would be $846.09 to go from California to Kentucky and back to California again. Regular fuel costs are around $4.66 per gallon for your trip.

How many days does it take to go from Kentucky to California?

It takes approximately 32h 25m to drive from Kentucky to California.

How many hours drive to California to Kentucky?

How long is the drive from California to Kentucky? The total driving time is 33 hours, 35 minutes.

How many hours apart is Kentucky and California?

Kentucky To California travel time Kentucky is located around 3566 KM away from California so if you travel at the consistent speed of 50 KM per hour you can reach California in 71.33 hours. Your California travel time may vary due to your bus speed, train speed or depending upon the vehicle you use.