A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
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A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
Summer Secrets of Bentonville: Maximize your Experience
Join Visit Bentonville and creator Nichole as we share expert local insights on how to make the most of your time in Bentonville, Arkansas! Whether you're a first-time visitor or a frequent traveler to the MTB Capital of the World, this episode is packed with insider tips on top attractions, outdoor adventures, and must-visit spots around town.
From biking downtown and exploring world-class trails to discovering hidden gems and indulging in unforgettable dining experiences, we’ll help you plan an itinerary that showcases the very best of Bentonville. Get ready to experience the town like a local and uncover what makes it a top destination for outdoor enthusiasts, art lovers, and foodies alike!
Follow Nichole: @coleyraeh or luckeywanderers.com
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Welcome to A New American Town. I'm Natalie with Visit Bentonville. Today's episode is a special feature where we wanted to share our local insights with you on how to maximize your summer visit to Bentonville, arkansas. Insights with you on how to maximize your summer visit to Bentonville, arkansas. Nicole Holtz has been visiting Bentonville since she was a kid and she's seen this place continue to grow from a small town to a bustling hub for creativity, cycling, experiences and more. I've lived here in Bentonville for two years and I have completely dived into the ins and outs of this city through my role at Visit Bentonville. Nicole is a travel creator rooted in outdoor adventure, homeschool and family exploration, so let's get into it. Thanks for joining us, nicole.
Nichole :Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to sit down and talk with you, yeah me too.
Natalie Stika:Can you share how you got into travel blogging first and what kind of inspired your journey as a creator?
Nichole :Yeah, absolutely so, in all honesty and in full disclosure. It was kind of by accident. I never intended to take this path. I just we happened to move 19 hours away from all of our family right after my son was born, and then my daughter was born after we moved and I realized that I didn't really wanna have to ask my husband to take vacation time just so I could drive home and see my mom. And so we live in Southwest Arkansas.
Nichole :My family was in Iowa and so, truthfully, bentonville has been on my direct path. It's usually where, when my kids were tiny, we would get out to let them stretch. And once I realized I could do it, once I realized that I was capable of traveling alone with my kids just so that I could get home and see my mom, I started doing what my mom calls squirreling, which was we just started to take little detours and adventures and I just kind of casually started sharing about them on social media and it started getting some traction and attention. And I've been incredibly honored to hold the position that I do to help encourage other families to get out and explore with their kids.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, it's so special what you do. You have two children correct?
Nichole :Yes, I do my son. They're not little anymore. In fact, my son is two inches taller than me, he's 14 and my daughter is 11.
Natalie Stika:But you've been traveling with them since they were babies. Yes, quite literally.
Nichole :My daughter was about three months old when we started these adventures, and it wasn't always pretty and in fact it usually ended with one or all three of us crying. But it was worth the hard work, because the memories that we've cultivated along the way I'll carry with me the rest of my life.
Natalie Stika:That's really sweet, cool. Well, you'reline on your website, so you have so many talents. A woman of so many wonders. Your online blog is called Lucky Wonders and your tagline is may you find the wonder as you wander. I love that line. What does this phrase mean to you in the context of family travel and kind of what inspired that?
Nichole :Oh, thank you. It actually has multiple layers of meaning to it. A big part of that is when we first moved to where we currently, and kind of what inspired that learn. Things like bless your heart doesn't mean what I thought it meant and I just really wanted to dive into loving where I live but then also, along with that, really learning to bloom where you're planted.
Nichole :And as I started continuing to travel with my kids and diving more into the travel, I just really really embraced the fact that every town, no matter how big, no matter how small, no matter how scenic, no matter how big the mountains are, every town has something special and every place has something you can learn from it. Every place, every person has a story to tell and I really felt like you know, if we just have, if I, as the mom, have an attitude and embrace wonder wherever we're going, it's going to make it magic wherever we're traveling. And you know things will be hard. There might not be. It's not always big, flashy, exciting places that we're going, but if we have a mindset of wonder and curiosity, every place can be amazing, that's awesome.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, that's such a fabulous philosophy and you can definitely see that that's rooted in your blog and your content, and your kids are really going to take that with them forever.
Nichole :So super special? I sure hope so. It's just that for us it's a kind of a core family value for us is just really living with the glass half full.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, oh sweet. Well, I would love to get into our summer recommendations for everyone. Listening, I feel like you know all the things that I don't know, and back and forth. We recently just posted Nicole on a creator visit. Her kids were at camps here in Northwest Arkansas which I'd love for you to talk about. And yeah, we can just open up with that. Do you want to talk about some of your favorite highlights from your recent trip here?
Nichole :I would love to and I will try to be succinct, but that's difficult to do because if you talk to my kids, all three of us have favorites. We could list on and on all day. But yeah, like you said, I was thrilled to come up and work with you guys last week. And what made this trip extra special? It was a new travel endeavor for us, which was I called it destination summer camps. So we're picking a city, and Bentonville is always at the top of our list and my daughter did some incredible camps at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art and it was such a treat to pick her up every day and I got to walk to pick her up. But we'll get into that. It was just so exciting to hear her excitement at the end of each day where she's getting to go to this summer camp at, I think, a world-renowned art museum.
Natalie Stika:um and just it is a world-renowned. It is world renowned and and being able.
Nichole :you know she uh, we can dive into that more, but she was one of the camps was an architecture camp and she aspires to be an architect, and so being able to take this camp at some place iconic like Crystal Bridges um, there's Fay Jones School of Design instructors involved was amazing. But the added layer of amazing to that is I actually got to explore Bentonville in a new to me way, because my entire life I've always been coming through Bentonville with my kids and so to have some time to explore by myself during the day was a really. It put a unique spin on exploring Bentonville that I haven't been able to do before. So it was.
Nichole :I think probably all of my top favorites involve coffee and walking and being outdoors, but you know, off the hop, crystal Bridges will always be at the top of my list for both the permanent collection and the contemporary exhibits that are brought in. They're always world-class. They're always so well done. I learn so much, which is also a core value of mine is I want to be a lifelong learner and I want my kids to be lifelong learners, so Crystal Bridges is always at the top. Kohler is always at the top. Again, I've never had the chance to go by myself. So being able to go by myself and do some hikes and then just sit in nature with really good coffee and being able to sit there I actually had my Seek app out, I had my Merlin Birds app out and I got to just sit there and check off some really exciting things. I could go on and on, but the excellent coffee, access to nature and art are always at the top of my list. That is so so special.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, I love how um trendy I don't even know if that's the right word like resting and relaxing vacation, is becoming R and R vacation. Um, and that Bentonville is that place for that you can do really exciting. Fun things too. You know, we have super awesome concerts and so much to see, so much great architecture and art and cycling. Of course, that's like major adrenaline right there.
Nichole :Otherwise, you know this was actually the first trip through Bentonville where we didn't bring our bikes. Usually we have our bikes with us and we're biking to all the places, but you know, so it was a different experience, but it was just as fantastic. Where I live is not a walkable community, so being able to stay somewhere that was it is a beautiful walkable community, and it's not just walkable. There, somewhere that was it is a beautiful walkable community, and it's not just walkable. There are flowers and wildflowers and art and so many things yeah, I can just um, it's really soul soothing, no matter if you're, you know, chasing, which I did the rise a couple of times, so there was like the active part of it as well, but, um, whatever you're looking for, you can find it.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you talked about the wildflowers. That is like my number one reason that you should come to Bentonville in the summer is the wildflowers. It is so amazing. And the spring here is absolutely incredible. We get so much visitors in the spring, but I don't know where I'm from. Before here, I had never had flowers in the summer. It was always too dry and too hot. But here, because we get so much rain in the spring, we still have beautiful blooms in the summer and it is just so magical and so special and you like kind of what you were saying.
Natalie Stika:Please let's talk more about it how you can walk from the square to crystal bridges and then get to your Airbnb if you're staying downtown or at one of the hotels yeah, that actually was such a treat.
Nichole :Also, it's the first time that I've stayed, you know, in Bentonville that's walkable where I could. This was phenomenal. The place that we stayed was right next to the Greenway Trail and then the Crystal Bridges Trail, so I was able to walk to drop my daughter off and pick her up, which was just. There was something really beautiful about being able to leisurely stroll away from Crystal Bridges to hear about our day. We got to connect and stop and look at the creek and some of the art, and then we could walk back to where we were staying, at our Airbnb, so we could chill for a minute, change clothes, you know, relax, and then we could walk right back out and we're right on the main square.
Nichole :And it's just, it's so special to be able to be somewhere that's walkable. I think that's something that it sometimes gets overlooked. And Bentonville not only is it a bikeable community where you can bike these incredible trails in every part of the city. You can walk to almost every part of the city, which is exactly what I was seeking, I wanted to have, I wanted my kids to have this incredible experience, and I was after a little bit of a mom retreat, I guess, and so for me, just being able to move my body in a beautiful place with beautiful scenery, bentonville checks all those boxes.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, oh my gosh. Can we get more into the mom retreat aspect? I know you did some specific things that were able to help you kind of relax more. What? What were some of those highlights?
Nichole :Yeah. So this again, this was a new, a new perspective for us. I'm in a season now where all of a sudden, I'm the mom with the older kids and I feel okay dropping them off at a summer camp in a city where they and they're confident enough. They were like it's fine, we don't know anybody, let's go have a good time, and they were okay with it. So it was. It was new to me and I wasn't sure how it would go.
Nichole :We're a homeschool family. We've homeschooled from the beginning, just so that we have the flexibility in our schedule to travel. So time alone to explore is a foreign concept. It's a little bit new for me, but I'm always solo. Travel is really important to me and being a mom who gets some time alone, it was. It was really beautiful.
Nichole :So just being able to enjoy you know there's quite a line at Onyx Coffee sometimes in the morning, but just being able to stand in line and appreciate the scene around me was wonderful. Being able to walk places was wonderful. I got to do a hot yoga class at Yoga Story, which was such a fun studio. The instructor was just phenomenal. I also got, you know, I got to go to Kohler and I spent half a day at Kohler and I went and did the rise back to back a couple of times, which my legs paid for the next day.
Nichole :It's rather flat where I live, but you know, just being able to take on some things that my kids would have happily done it with me, but being able to do it by myself and just have those moments of like I'm just listening to my own breath, even if I sound like I'm dying just being able to move and experience stillness and quiet or sit or listen to the birds at Kohler, being able to stroll through the square with some coffee and just check out some of the shops or I got another coffee and walked up to the top of the ledger building and just being able to really soak in all of the amazing art and nature and access to really neat things was really important to me.
Nichole :And then an added layer to that is I have celiac disease and quite a few food allergies. Bentonville is one of the few places where I can go, where almost every restaurant can accommodate for my food allergies. So that is a whole part of the mom retreat was being able to have some long, leisurely lunches by myself at places where I could eat so many things on the menu Now the food here is unmatched.
Natalie Stika:It is incredible how many options there are, and the servers and staff know what you're talking about and they make you feel so confident and comfortable with what you're eating, so you don't have to worry about it and think that the rest of your trip is going to be ruined.
Natalie Stika:That's so big. I also have celiac, so I totally understand and that's why I love living here. Through all of this that you've been able to explore in Bentonville, do you have any recommendations for like getting out of the summer heat or experiencing really, really hot weather? I always tell people that we have really great shaded like tree canopy coverings on all of our trails, so, honestly, the heat of summer day, if you're walking around on the Compton Gardens Trail to Crystal Bridges or if you're at Kohler, there will definitely be some like sunny spots, but pretty much the whole time it's covered and so I don't get that hot. But I'm also from Texas, so how?
Nichole :do you feel Right? So, truth be told, being from the southwest corner of Arkansas, there's a significant temperature shift from the southwest corner to the northwest corner, so for us it felt wonderfully cool while we were there. But I will say that's one of my favorite things is we have been there at some of the hottest times in the summer and the trails are well shaded. Or if they're not well shaded the entire way, there's places where you can sit in the shade and rest the entire way. There's places where you can sit in the shade and rest there's. You know, as at Lawrence Park, the splash pad right by downtown runs all day long. And you know, quite honestly, a couple of the days when we were walking back with my daughter, we were like let's just go walk through the splash pad.
Natalie Stika:We'll change our clothes later, it'll be fine. Yeah, there's also a splash pad at Crystal Bridges Campus, up on the front side by the new parking garage, by Amazium. Yeah, so we have two splash pads now, and then we have so many like creeks, that you a lot of people dip their toes in, or you'll see dogs playing in the water. It's so fun.
Nichole :We have Park Springs. Park is one of our favorites. You know you go to the park but then you kind of go down into the ravine and there's that really beautiful fresh, spring fed creek. That's down there and you know, as you're going down in the ravine the temperature goes down because it's shaded, but also the creek water is so nice and refreshingly cool. That's one of our favorite places to go to.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, I love that. What is your favorite? Like mid afternoon, get out of the sun, kind of thing. How do you kill your time? I heard a lot of coffee.
Nichole :I have a problem, mostly just because it's having access to so many phenomenal coffee shops. You know, with just I feel like so many of the restaurants and this is across the board, all the coffee shops in Northwest Arkansas and so many of the restaurants put so much intention behind what they're doing with their food and what they're serving and the atmosphere. So, everywhere you go, it's this immersive experience with the food you're consuming, the area you're surrounded with. So, I would say, in the afternoon, you know, crystal Bridges Museum, the general admission is always free, which is such an incredible thing in of itself. I have no. I mean, I think when we were there, I probably walked through the permanent galleries three times, just because I love them. You know, granted, it's a little different with the construction that's happening and it's going to be great when it's done. But just the fact that Crystal Bridges is free, you can, you can pop in and there's the beautiful restaurant that's there, there's the coffee shop that's open there, you know, you can pop through and just browse the galleries and cool down.
Natalie Stika:For a minute, and then now the Heartland Whole Health Institute. I'm like freaking out over here.
Nichole :I spent probably way too much time at the Heartland Whole Health Institute and what's so funny is I walked in to go on the brochure that talks about the art and just the intention behind the heartland health institute was so exciting. And as I walked in I was browsing the art and I heard a group come by and then I heard the teacher say okay, art and architecture class, let's all gather up. And I did see my daughter, but I was like I don't, should I wave, should I like stay here in the corner and hide? And so I just continued. But that just walking into that space, again free, open to the public, you can walk through. I saw they just posted they're going to start doing architectural tours, which is so exciting. A beautiful space to cool off, it's free, you can walk in, you can sit down, you can enjoy some art. Just gasp at the architecture, because it's amazing.
Natalie Stika:Magnificent. Yeah, it's the Marlon Blackwell architecture work. It's just so beautiful and amazing. I love that you hit on that Crystal Bridges is free.
Natalie Stika:I feel like every time we tell people that they are so shocked and amazed and so excited, and I just wanted to hit on the fact that almost every single one of our museums is free. The only one that has a small fee is the Amazium, and that's the Children's Science Museum. Only one that has a small fee is the amazium, and that's the children's science museum, which is for all ages, even adults.
Nichole :You can have fun there, but seriously, yeah, yeah, in fact I was here for governor's conference. I was up in bentonville and I climbed, you know, the like leaf climber structure for adults, but it was so much fun the amazium is.
Nichole :It is definitely on your list, but I will say that I agree that's one of my favorite things um the native american museum, or the museum of native american history amazing, amazing place. Free the momentary, really really cool structure with contemporary exhibits, free craft cheese factory I did. You know what's so funny? My kids and I were actually there for the grand opening because I was so excited about it.
Nichole :And I saw that Bandaloop was going to be there and we're big fans and so we went to go watch the grand opening so we could see Bandaloop.
Natalie Stika:I love that.
Nichole :That's so cool, yeah, and then were you going to say Peel Museum and Botanical Gardens, yes, yes, like there's all of these incredible places where, if it's, you can pop in as many times as you want to because they're free, so there's no pressure. You know, and I know, with traveling with kids, sometimes, like after two hours in the museum, they are done, done, done, and so there's no pressure to feel like, oh, we have to get our money's worth and stay this whole day.
Nichole :You can do an hour and then go back outside and go play and then do another hour the next day and I mean families, add up like one way or another.
Natalie Stika:whether you have one kid or you have five or more, it definitely adds up, and so I feel like that's why Benville is such an ideal place for families, old or young, no matter the age.
Nichole :It's so cool.
Natalie Stika:Well, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you if you have like one thing. Maybe not Crystal Bridges everyone says Crystal Bridges, but what's on your like Benville bucket list that everyone has to go to that maybe wanted to ask you if you have like one thing. Maybe not crystal bridges everyone says crystal bridges, but what's on your like banville bucket list that everyone has to go to that maybe isn't as known oh, boy, that's so hard because I feel like there's so much that I love.
Nichole :I honestly park spring parks is really at the top of my list because it's easy to miss if you go to the park and you're staying like up near the pavilion and the playground up there, but if you go down, I think it's the Black Apple Creek. Is that what's down there? If you take the trails and go down in that ravine, it's just, it's the most beautiful little slice of nature in the middle of the city. Uh, we love it so much and I and I will say Kohler is on my like, that's for sure at the top of my list and it is really well known. But I'm telling you, the rise was really fun, it's like 11 flights of stairs.
Natalie Stika:Well, it's fun because you can connect to the trails above and you can see the mountain biking trails and you can actually walk those. Those are not just for mountain bikers. You just have to, like, keep an eye out and make sure you're being aware. Probably don't put headphones in so you can hear them, but yeah, yeah, I've gotten lost on those trails up there and it's so fun to explore.
Nichole :It's really beautiful. And I think one other thing too is just and I have the luxury of being able to do this with older kids but the thing I would say don't miss is don't miss Bentonville when the sun goes down, like there's some lights at. There was one night in particular that my daughter and I literally were playing in the. We were the only ones at the splash pad. I think it's Lawrence Pavilion or Park Lawrence Plaza. We were there until it shut down. We were playing in the splash pad, we got to see the sunset, we got to see the lights come on on the Peel Compton sign and just being able to be outside even as the sun went down is a big one.
Nichole :Also, I think stopping by the Way of Color on the Crystal Bridges Trail for sunrise or sunset those are easy to miss, but just being out after dark. We love being at the momentary once the sun goes down because we like to just run and play. And now the Bentonville Boombox is over there and we love stopping by the Buckyball to watch the colors once the sun goes down is over there and we love stopping by the buckyball to watch the colors once the sun goes down. So I think just being willing to linger a little bit longer past when the sun goes down is worth it yeah, man, that's a whole itinerary right there.
Natalie Stika:Hope everyone got that. That was fabulous, well, nicole. Um, last thing how can people get connected with you, how can they follow you and just stay up to date on all of your travels?
Nichole :oh, thank, thank you. So the best place would be my Instagram page, which it's Koli Ray C-O-L-E-Y-R-A-E-H. That's where I share everything, and I'll have some more Bentonville itinerary posts coming out shortly just to kind of wrap up all of the amazing things that we got to do in a whole new perspective, because one bucket list thing that I also got to do I've never been able to do in all these years is I got to go up to the Tower Bar. Never done that because I've always had my kids with me.
Nichole :So that was really fun to just go up there and see the view.
Natalie Stika:Yeah, I love that. Yay, well, thanks everyone for listening. Don't forget, visit Bentonville is here to help you navigate things to do, where to stay, what to eat and what's going on in our new American town. Check out the show notes to catch us on social. Sign up for our newsletter no-transcript.