Kansas City to St Louis road trip: Best stops, distance & drive time
The best stops to add to a Kansas City to St Louis road trip itinerary are Rock Ridge Memorial State Park, America’s National Churchill Museum and Graham Cave State Park. By car, the distance from Kansas City to St Louis is 248 miles, with a driving time of 3h42m.
Planning a Kansas City to St Louis road trip
A road trip from Kansas City to St Louis connects the two largest cities in Missouri.
Good experiences in Kansas City include an indulgent food tour of the city’s best BBQ joints, Segway tours, the Sealife Aquarium and wine-tasting trips.
Good St Louis experiences include true crime walking tours and small group tours that include going to the top of the St Louis Arch and a Mississippi River cruise.
Kansas City to St Louis distance and driving time
By car, the distance from Kansas City to St Louis is 248 miles. That makes for a driving time of around three hours and 42 minutes.
The quickest route heads mostly east along the I-70.
The best stops to add to a Kansas City to St Louis road trip itinerary are Rock Ridge Memorial State Park, America’s National Churchill Museum and Graham Cave State Park.
Kansas City to St Louis road trip attractions: Rock Ridge Memorial State Park
A short diversion south of Columbia, Missouri, Rock Ridge Memorial State Park hosts some of the state’s best hiking trails.
If you pick just one short walk, make it the Devil’s Icebox Trail. This 0.5 mile loop walk includes a 63ft-tall natural tunnel, an underground river emerging as a spring and the star attractions, a double sinkhole known as the Devil’s Icebox. Signage around the park explains the karst geology and the wildlife the lives in the caves.
Kansas City to St Louis drive: America’s National Churchill Museum
On March 15, 1946, the UK’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his famous Sinews of Peace speech. It is best known for the line: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”
It may surprise many to learn that the speech was made at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The campus now hosts America’s National Churchill Museum, which is a massively detailed exploration of all things Churchill. Obviously there’s a big focus on the Fulton speech, but there’s a lot to discover about a fascinating, complex character.
Attractions between Kansas City and St Louis: Graham Cave State Park
Just before you reach Danville, Graham Cave State Park is riveting for perhaps unexpected reasons. You can walk up to the cave mouth, which is reasonably impressive without ever being astounding.
However, artifacts have been found here that reveal plenty about the people who lived in the cave 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Interpretive exhibits along the walk to the cave give plenty of insight into the prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
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