In September, our family was able to go on our yearly vacation. We LOVE vacationing in September, but haven’t been able to go these past several years due to high school sports that my kids have been involved in. This year, though, we didn’t have anyone in any fall sports (my son is in college now), so we took the chance to take off!
We tend to go to Branson, Missouri and we typically rent a condo at a resort. This year, we split that up a little. We stayed several days at Table Rock State Park camping in our new camper AND we stayed several days at our very favorite resort to stay at in Branson, The Suites at Fall Creek. We were gone for 2 weeks, so we had plenty of time to do both.
When you camp, you save money by having lower lodging prices, you cook all your meals AND your activities can revolve around the outdoors. But, if you spend much time in the camper and you have a big family, you’re always on top of one another. It’s a lot of fun, but we also really enjoy resort vacationing as well!
When you stay in a condo at a resort, you save money by cooking all your meals in the fully stocked kitchen, you use the resort amenities (ours had a pool, mini golf, shuffleboard and a playground) and you do your laundry in your condo, too. We love condos, because we can spread out a little and I never come home with dirty laundry!
Here’s some pictures of the The Suites at Fall Creek, where we stayed.
Swimming. Definitely a preferred thing to do any time we’re on vacation. The indoor pool was getting a new paint job while we were there, but they heated this outdoor pool up for us and the kids thought it was amazing! (Really, it was pretty warm outside and my daughter has asthma, so it’s better for her to be outside away from the chlorine fumes anyway)
We had this amazing view from our balcony of Lake Taneycomo. I think we may have been in the best location of the whole resort! There were 2 bald eagles that were living right there on the river and on several occasions we were able to watch the bald eagle, just sitting in the tree right across from us. My husband even saw him in flight, swooping down to grab something to eat out of the river. It’s a rare thing to see a bald eagle in the wild, so we really enjoyed that experience!
Each bedroom was equipped with a king size bed (must have for me these days, when I have littles crawl in with me). And a nice extra large bathroom was attached to each bedroom, where a nice jacuzzi bath tub was. So, since our condo had 2 bedrooms, we also had 2 jacuzzi tubs. (The kids loved that!)
The kitchen is fully equipped, with a full size refrigerator, a microwave, oven, and all the dishes you’ll need to make dinner and serve it. (I ALWAYS bring my slow cooker along so that I don’t have to slave over dinners for very long…after all I’m on vacation!)
Attached to the kitchen was the dining room, where we would gather to eat our dinners together.
The living room was spacious with a large sliding glass door, going out to the covered and screened in balcony overlooking the river. The couch pulled out into another double bed, so we had plenty of room for sleeping kids!
While we are on vacation, we tend to pick a couple of bigger ticket things to do. We already had season’s passes to Silver Dollar City, so that was going to be our main entertainment. My kids had a great time in the new section, Fireman’s Landing!
In addition to Silver Dollar City, we decided to also take the kids to The Branson Belle, because we could get discounts with our season’s passes.
In addition, we took them to the ever famous Lambert’s Cafe. The place where they throw the rolls and you get to catch them if you want one. Apparently, we went too late as my 4 year old son could not make it through the meal. Thankfully, he fell asleep before we ordered, so we didn’t waste our money. He was out for the night!!
To save money, we also spent time at MoonShine Beach (it was actually warm enough in mid September!), visited the Dewey Short Nature Center and did lots of outlet mall shopping. We love visiting Branson!
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