$10k pays for a year of room and board at some colleges.
We visited one school as a side trip on a family vacation with D1, and three with D2 on a family trip a couple years later. All the other visits have been local or after acceptances (mostly scholarship interviews). Even on the dedicated college visit trips (with just one parent along) we’ve made a point of doing some sightseeing in the area of the college. Just on those short trips to visit a particular college, we’ve had some fun, won a couple of big scholarships, lost a couple others, visited a civil war battlefield and a very old post office, the Alamo, and some amazing graffiti, and a tree growing in the middle of the highway in the middle of nowhere, and had fantastic pizza. And even if you include the total cost of those two big family vacations that happened to include college visits, I think we’ve spent less than $10k over two kids.