I rarely travel without my Dachshunds Summit and Gretel.
I’ve taken them on a 4,000 mile road trip from Seattle, Washington to Phoenix, Arizona.
I took them on a “tour” along the west coast in April 2022, driving over 3,000 miles and holding several Dachshund meetups along the way in which.
UPDTATED: Article originally published August 2014.
I drove to Colorado with them to climb the best 14er within the state – Mt. Elbert.
I flew to Latest York City with my Dachshund Gretel twice.
Unnecessary to say, I travel so much with my dogs, which suggests I’ve also spend 1000’s of hours online planning our dog friendly vacations.
I believed I’d share a few of my favorite resources I exploit to plan our dog friendly travel itineraries.
I exploit these resource commonly to go looking for dog friendly hotels, dog friendly campgrounds, dog friendly restaurants; and dog friendly trails.
Planning a Dog Friendly Road Trip
When planning a dog friendly road trip, the very first thing I do is use Google Maps to calculate driving times and find approximate stopping points.
For instance, I only need to drive 8 hours the primary day, because that’s be about 11 total hours on the road with breaks, I keep picking destinations along our route and plugging them into the map until I find one which is about 12 hours from Seattle.
I keep doing this until I’ve estimated all the stops between our start and finish destinations.
I wish to select my very own stop locations and frequency, so I look along the chosen route for dog friendly campgrounds, fun things to see, and places to go to (like National Parks I can enjoy with my dog).
I’ll adjust my previously determined stops based on stops I need to make along the way in which and the way long I would like to spend at these stops.
Finding Dog Friendly Hotels
If I would like to remain in hotels once we travel, there are several ways in which I find them.
The PetsWelcome dog road trip planner is useful when in search of dog friendly hotels along a driving route
The road trip planner is Google map based so it looks and feels familiar to most individuals.
You possibly can enter your starting destination, final destination, and set your search parameters for hotels (distance out of your route and distance apart along the route).
If I’m not driving and merely need to see hotels near our final destination, or I would like to see additional selections not returned by the PetsWelcome trip planner, I exploit the Bring Fido Website.
It’s like Expedia for dog friendly hotels.
You possibly can view all dog friendly hotels in a city in addition to estimated rates, descriptions, reviews, and typically pet policy information.
You possibly can book a hotel, and a competitive rate, right on the positioning.
That is, by far, essentially the most comprehensive, easy-to-use website I actually have used for locating and booking dog friendly hotels.
Finding Dog Friendly Restaurants
I like to go looking the Go Pet Friendly Destination Guides first when in search of places I can eat with my dog.
The destination guides are like personal reviews on a particular location.
I like seeing the photographs and hearing the stories from actual humans as an alternative of selling mumbo-jumbo off of a web site.
Whether I discover a destination guide for the town I’m visiting or not, the following places I look are the Go Pet Friendly travel search and the Bring Fido dog friendly city directory.
Between those two resources I often find all the dog friendly restaurants in an area.
Sometimes I’ll do a bit of extra checking for restaurants on Dog Friendly.com.
Finding Dog Friendly Trails
While Bring Fido lists some dog friendly trails on their website, I find their listing sorely lacking.
Specifically, they primarily only list park and “tourist” trails.
That’s enough for some people but we wish to get far out into nature and see a few of the very best natural sights the realm has to supply.
If I’m in search of dog friendly trails in Washington State where I live, I exploit the Washington Trails Association hike finder and filter for dog allowed (under trail feature and rankings).
Read: Find Off-Leash Dog Trails in Washington
If I’m traveling out of the state, I exploit AllTrails and filter by dog friendly (under suitability).
Honorable Mentions
I primarily travel with my dogs within the US and road trips are my favorite mode of transportation.
The web sites above meet all of my research needs.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of other web sites value mentioning.
- Travelnuity – She has travelled to many locations world wide together with her Dachshund
- Boogie the Pug – she has some details about traveling along with your small dog to the north east coat and South America.
Personally, I actually have written articles specific to:
Final Thoughts
I like taking my dogs on vacation with me so I’m consistently researching where to go to, stay, and play with my dogs.
I’ve listed my favorite to-to web sites for planning my dog friendly travel in this text.
Whether you’re in search of a dog road trip planner, a dog friendly restaurant, or a dog friendly place to put your heads at night, you’ll need to bookmark this text for future reference.
