I find great joy in traveling to new places, but I am quickly overwhelmed when I start adding up the costs. I’d love to say that money shouldn’t be a factor in making memories, but unfortunately, it is.
Last year, we decided to take a weekend trip up to St. Louis, MO, and it ended up being a big hit for all of us and not a big hit on our bank account. Many of my coworkers had given us recommendations on things to do, and it got to the point where my husband and I had to really pick and choose what we felt like we would have time to do.
So—here’s what we, a family of 4, did in St. Louis over a long weekend…
St. Louis Science Center
For starters, we were stationed in Millington, TN, at the time, and the drive up to St. Louis was about 4.5 hours. Our family is accustomed to drives much longer than that, so we saw that as an easy drive. We were instructed to stop at Lambert’s Café in Sikeston for lunch, as it’s the infamous restaurant of thrown biscuits. The food was delicious, the biscuits were divine, and it definitely became a memorable lunch for our sweet family—I would highly recommend going if you can. When we arrived in St. Louis, we immediately stopped in at the St. Louis Science Center.
Cost to get into the St. Louis Science Center is FREE!
Yes, you saw that correctly—St. Louis offers many free activities; this is one of them. It does cost $15 to park in the main parking lot, but there is free street parking if you don’t want to pay. We got there around 3 and stayed until closing, which definitely was not enough time to really be able to explore the facility. We were rushing the kids along from room to room, hoping to at least visit each of the exhibits. My boys loved the many different building exhibits, including the “structures” exhibit, which allowed them to explore building bridges, skyscrapers, and even their very own Gateway Arch. One could easily spend 3-4 hours here, but even if you only have a few hours, it’s worth a visit!
St. Louis Zoo
The next day we woke up early and went straight to the zoo. I would like to note that this was by far the hardest place to navigate for parking. There is a zoo lot. But it got very full very fast. We decided to PIVOT (I can only say that in Ross’ voice from Friends) and park on the street. We did have a bit of a trek to walk into the zoo. But thankfully, it was a beautiful day.
The STL zoo is FREE. Yes, it’s one of three free zoos in the USA, and it’s truly a great zoo! Parking, I believe, is $10 for the lot, or you can do street parking for free. The zoo has 450 different species, ranging from Komodo dragons to sun bears to stingrays. My boys LOVE insects, so the insectarium was a fan favorite for them. We spent a solid 3-4 hours at the zoo and probably could’ve stayed longer. But we had reservations for the Gateway Arch mid-afternoon, so we had to leave shortly after 1:30.
Gateway Arch National Park
In case you haven’t been adding up our items yet, so far for 2 experiences we have spent about $15. For two very fun activities. Pretty good, right?! Okay, now on to the Gateway Arch National Park. This was probably the strangest national park our family has visited because we are used to the parks being in the wilderness, not in the middle of a big city! But the arch was truly magnificent. We found some street parking and walked down to the arch. The visitor center is next to the Old Courthouse. This was also a new experience for us—the visitor center is actually underground! You do have to go through a security checkpoint before heading down, but it doesn’t require a reservation to visit.
If you do have a reservation, they recommend getting through security 45 minutes before to allow time to get through and make your way down. Thankfully, the security line was relatively short for us, so we were able to get through and head downstairs with enough time to explore the museum and interactive exhibits before our boarding group was called. Everything is clearly labeled and made for an easy experience to get checked in and be in the right location when our time slot was called. Now, you may be asking, “Is it worth going to the top?” YES! It most definitely is worth it.
Ticket prices do vary depending on the time of year you go. We went in March and paid $19 for each of our adult tickets and $15 each for the kids. I do think they offer a discount if you have the National Park Annual Pass (or the military salute pass), but you had to wait and book your tickets there to get the discount, and we didn’t want to risk not getting a pass. For the four of us to go, it was $68. Certainly not as cheap as our other experiences, but it’s worth it. The ride up takes about 4 minutes, you get 7-10 minutes at the top to enjoy the views, and then a 3 min ride down. The whole experience takes close to an hour, though as they take you through a more extensive video on the creation of the arch and other fun facts, as well as getting you to where you need to be. My oldest is afraid of heights, and I was worried he wouldn’t do well with this. But he loved it! This national park quickly became my youngest son’s favorite national park. I will also note that we spent the rest of the evening enjoying downtown and grabbing dinner near the baseball stadium.
The City Museum
On our final day, we went to the City Museum. This was THE activity everyone said we had to do if we came to St. Louis. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to expect here. I anticipated a children’s museum of sorts with what they described. But it was so much more. The City Museum is an abandoned 10-story warehouse turned into a massive playground for people of all ages and sizes. They have everything from a skate-less park, man made cave system, a Ferris wheel, an aquarium, and slides galore! They offered us a military discount, although nothing was listed on their website. The four of us got in for $55, which was incredible, knowing that usually it’s about $30/person. Looking through the FAQ, we decided not to bring in a backpack or water because we didn’t want to get a locker. If you want to bring those items, definitely plan on getting a locker. Lockers are close to $10 I believe. Some of the areas we climbed through were quite literally a squeeze, and I’m so happy we didn’t have extra items to cart around.
One learning lesson I learned the hard way was that you’ll want zipper pockets or a fanny pack of some sort to zip up your phone/keys. I unfortunately had my phone slip out of my joggers not once, but twice, and it ultimately SHATTERED the back of my phone.
So the museum visit ended up costing a little more, but my husband had zipper pockets and never lost anything out of them. So just keep that in mind! We ate lunch inside the museum and were probably there for close to 6 hours. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s very easy to spend a whole day there. Also, if you have kids prone to running away from you, maybe stick an Airtag in their zippered pocket. There were many squeezes that required the boys to either wait for us or we had to backtrack and find an alternative way to them. We had so much fun here that my kids STILL beg us to go back. We all loved the slides and the outdoor MonstroCity. You’ll definitely get a good sweat on and have so much fun while doing it.
Magic House Children’s Museum
After our wild and crazy climbing, we decided to end our day at the Magic House Children’s Museum. This museum is free to active duty and their family members, so this was yet another fun and free little outing. We unfortunately didn’t get to this museum until about 3:45 and had only a little over an hour to explore. This museum was definitely geared more towards the younger ages, but my 6 and 7 year old still had a blast. We all loved the Bubble Room exhibit and the Wonder Works exhibit. My boys spent a lot of their time in the children’s village, which included an auto shop, market, electric company, pet clinic, and more. We crafted, explored, built, climbed, and finished our time with the super slide! I would definitely recommend going if you have kids under the age of 10, and I would plan for 2-3 hours there.
To sum it all up, we spent $138 on activities for a very FULL weekend in St. Louis. We obviously had to pay for a hotel, gas, and food, which would bring the overall total for the weekend higher. But just looking at the actual activities, this was a WIN. St. Louis has so many more things to offer for visitors, we just chose those 4 for our family. My kids still talk about the City Museum and the city itself ALL the time.
Several times while typing this, they have come over and asked if we are going back. Unfortunately, we don’t live on that side of the states anymore, but I would happily go back if we could. St. Louis may not have been at the top of my list of destinations to visit. But it is a place that I now recommend to those who are in the area.
