Hello! Thank you for visiting my blog site, my name is Erlyn Sweitzer and I want to share with you our family's personal journey in the Ozarks.
I grew up in a big city and when I hear about vacation I think about a place where people are relaxing and having fun! My idea of a nice vacation is to go to a crowded beach with my family, waiting for a beautiful sunset and watching our kids play with the sand and water.
We also like to go to a campground to fish, barbecue and make some s'mores for my kids, it feels a lot better compared to the crowd at the center of a big city.
I don't think that there's a place where you can truly enjoy the serenity of nature or just be with your loved ones, I always dream of an isolated enchanting place for our family retreat enjoying the view of the mountains and watching animals while getting some rest on the porch and drinking my favorite coffee. Never did I imagine that kind of vacation still exists until we moved to a charming and friendly small town called Harrison "The Heart of the Ozarks", it is located in Northwest Arkansas, a part of Ozark regions. We started looking for a place in South Missouri in 2020, my husband preferred to live in a small town in the countryside.
We arrived at Springfield Missouri airport and started looking for a place in Branson, Missouri.
A family member started talking to us about how wonderful it is to live and raise our children in the Ozarks and she highly recommended Branson, Missouri. It is a beautiful place, in fact Branson welcomes millions of visitors annually due to it's popularity among tourists for such a small town with around 12,000 residents. I will talk more about Southwest Missouri in my next blog.
We decided to drive and check out the border state down south of Missouri until we ended up in Harrison, a small but very charming town in North Arkansas. Oh my husband just fell in love with it! I will talk more about Harrison, Arkansas in my next blog.
If you are looking for a vacation with less crowd with your family, a remote rental home in the mountain for your own retreat or a group retreat, a luxurious romantic getaway or something more adventurous like mountain climbing, explore caves, hiking on a trail for miles looking for amazing waterfalls, motorcycling on scenic routes, dig for diamonds, stargazing on the mountain, a remote quiet place to get away from it all, a place to hunt and fish if hunting and fishing is your favorite, canoeing in the Buffalo river or just float with your favorite tube. If you like to enjoy a bigger boat like a pontoon boat for your group or family, rent a jet ski or a speed boat, you can go to a beautiful lake with clear water and plenty of fish, go jump and swim in the water while fishing, the Ozarks have it all!
There are plenty of lakes in the Ozarks, one of our family's favorite is Bull Shoals lake, because it is close to our place, big open water and less crowd, we love to pull a tube with our pontoon boat for our family activity, that's one of our favorites, it is so much fun! My husband Kris and my son Earl also love fishing, you can catch some bass, walleye, crappie, catfish, trout and other species. There are plenty of resorts and campgrounds around Bull Shoals lake if you want to stay longer and spend more time doing fun things at the lake.
My second favorite is Table Rock lake, it is also close to where we live, there are also plenty of luxurious resorts around there, more crowd than Bull Shoals lake because it is the closest lake from Branson Missouri, there you can find a dinner cruise and a showboat that serves lunch and dinner, you can go check Silver Dollar City themed park while you're there and stay in Branson, Missouri if you love to watch live shows, concerts and amusement parks.
I will be talking about our hometown Harrison Arkansas on my next blog. See you there!
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