Adventuring Together: Our Family trip to Bentonville
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It seems that my blog is taking a vacation from regular posting—somehow I haven’t posted since last May when I shared about the trip to Spain. Oops.
But summer is often filled with all those summery things—and blogs and writing get replaced with popsicles and lake days.
Still, I wanted to share about our recent trip to Bentonville, Arkansas. I know it’s not generally the vacation spot that most families think about for a family trip. But let me convince you that it should be on your list!
We chose this spot to meet up with our family who lives in Texas (we live in MN)—it was a sweet spot for meeting up and spending a few days together. After we spent time with them, we had a few days to explore a little more with just the five of us.
To be honest, I didn’t know much about the area apart from the fact that the Walmart headquarters are there and there are lots of bike trails.
So, I’ll share a bit about what we did:
The Crystal Bridges Museum was one of our first stops. It was delightful and enjoyable for a short time with the kids. I could have spent a longer time enjoying the beautiful museum full of American art, but my kids kept me hustling ;)
On that same day, we also went to the Amazeum. Super cool place for the kids, and they all enjoyed it! I would say that I felt like the perfect age for it would be between 2-10. Although it was fun, I’m not sure we’d make a repeat trip since my kids are getting older.
We also visited downtown Bentonville a few times (once even biking in). The cute square was always full of people and there were little galleries and shops all around. Since you could grab ice cream for under $2 per person at the Spark Ice Cream truck, we visited almost every day ;)
After a few days in the area, we hit up the bike trails and area parks. Our kids started out with the kids’ bike park—it was especially a hit with our youngest (he’s five). The big boys loved hitting up the mountain biking trails like Slaughter Pen, All-American, Family Flow, Coler, and more. The boys had an absolute blast on the jumps, exciting trails, and challenging rides. Although I stuck with the paved trails (which were also so fun!), my youngest would often take a side path that had small gravel hills that he could easily manage on his little bike.
My favorite was probably riding to Airship Coffee at Coler. I loved that you can only get to this coffee shop by going on the bike path in. The coffee was amazing, and our boys loved the swing and having a yummy snack.
Along with biking, we also enjoyed an afternoon splashing around at Tanyard Creek—it was a super doable walk to get there. The kids enjoyed lots of rock throwing! On our last full day, we took ourselves on a little food tour and enjoyed sharing some meals and treats from several restaurants on our go-to list. There are so many good restaurant options!
So, where did we stay?
During the first part of the week, we stayed at the Hyatt Place Rogers/Bentonville. Since we have a lot of hotel/travel points with this card, it was totally free. In fact, we haven’t paid for a hotel in over two years (crazy!). It was a nice location to main things to see and do. It wasn’t fancy—but a free breakfast was a definite perk! If you want to know how to get a free hotel stay, just ask me and I’ll share some tips :)
For the second part of our trip, we stayed in this airbnb in Bella Vista. It was a nice place, but a little further from town. But after several days in a hotel, it was nice to spread out and have more space. It wasn’t my favorite airbnb we’ve ever stayed in, but it was fine for a few days.
Where did we eat?
Well, a lot of park benches. Ha! Most of our meals when we travel are food we pack along with us. It helps up keep costs down and can help simplify our days (instead of always trying to find a place to eat). But, we did go out a few times and enjoyed a lot of coffee ;)
Our favorites:
Onyx Coffee Lab in downtown Bentonville. Amazing coffee and cute outdoor space too!
Crepes Paulette. Delicious crepes—we shared a few different options :)
Hero’s Coffee. Also, wonderful coffee and the cutest little seating area for kids (or adults!)
El Jivaro Salvadorian restaurant. This place was definitely a more off-the-beaten path kinda place, but sooo good. If you’ve never had a pupusa, you need to try one!
Saiwok Vietnamese Street Food. Amazing! We didn’t try a lot, but what we did try was delicious and unique. Even my five year old thought it was so good. He’ll hardly eat a potato at home, but he was gobbling up the dumplings like candy-ha!
Yeyo’s tacos. Again, we got something to share (since we were having a bit of family food tour), and they did not disappoint. We went to the 8th street market location—which had a lot of yummy restaurants and shopping.
Sparks Ice Cream truck. We treated ourselves to ice cream a few times because it was so affordable and good! Plus, the truck parks downtown, so it’s a fun place to enjoy the scenery and have a treat!
All in all, we really loved our quick trip to Bentonville. And I’m a firm believer that any new place you explore can be a rich experience. There’s always something you can find to explore and enjoy together—even in your own backyard!
Want to see some other adventure together posts? Check out Italy, Washington DC, South Dakota, and Southern Spain :) Plus, I've got a post sharing our favorite travel stuff over here too.
ps. I promise this isn’t becoming a travel blog—but it’s just fun to share and remember too :)
