How do you plan fun road trips with your dog? You know we love to travel, except for Bailie. It’s so much more fun when we have fun things planned to see along the way. How do we find the oddities we take photos of? Today we have a few tips for our friends traveling with their dogs.
Planning ahead is key! The most important piece of the puzzle is your hotel(s). Not all hotels will allow dogs, most have number, size, and/or weight restrictions. You need to book hotels in advance. Remember to always leave your room and the hotel grounds the same or better than you found them so they will continue to allow dogs. Nelson is modeling the closet at a Drury Inn. It must be cooler in there and he likes it cooler if possible. We google pet friendly hotels in the cities we would like to stay in and go from there.
Safety is always an important issue. If we are not familiar with the area, we check with the front desk before going out on walks. They are also a great resource if you are looking for a good place for a walk. We got the tip to drive downtown in Cedar Rapids and walk along the river from the guy at the front desk. Not only is it nice for walking, we found a few nice photo ops.
Speaking of photo ops, google the city you are staying in and ask for best photo opps. There are always a lot of things that pop up. We googled Rockford and found these fun letters. A lot of times if you find one thing online, when you arrive, you will find more things in the area. In Rockford there was so much to see along the river, Olivia said we have to go back another time to capture it all. Who knew?
Planning should begin before leaving home. State and National Parks can be fun places to visit on your travels. Not all are dog friendly, so check that out first. Theodore Roosevelt National Park was beautiful and had a great sign for a photo op. Mount Rushmore is not dog friendly, but by studying the location in the Black Hills, we found some places better than the “tourist” spot to view the faces and take photos from the Needles Highway.
Roadside America is a great place to find the weird things along the highways. We always look there before we travel to a new place. The silly pink elephant is one thing we found using that website. We have also found giant otters, Paul Bunyan, and other oddities.
If you are interested in keeping track of the states your dog visits, the welcome centers are important. There are a lot of really poor ones out there, but some are amazing like the Virginia one. If you are not on a major highway, it may only be a sign on the side of the road. Use utmost care getting out with your dog to take a photo. Never let you dog off leash on the side of a road.
Touring a big city can be a good experience for your dog. Mom took me and Bailie to downtown Chicago in 2017. We had been to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but not a “real” big city. It was very crowded and loud. The L trains overhead were spooky as were the emergency vehicle sirens. Still we managed to find some fun places to visit, walk and take in some culture. The SeaDog boat tours are dog friendly. We went out on that for a nice ride until we hit a wave and got all drenched. Bailie was not happy. Mom would take us to a big city again but just for a day as it is stressful for us since we are not used to it.
Murals are something else we love to find. It all started with the Greetings Tour Mural Postcards. They have a map with all their mural locations, even in Hawaii and Alaska! We always check their site before leaving on a road trip to any new places.
People always want to know how we find all the things we take photos with and these are a few of the things we use. Mom also has a list of things she sees online so we don’t forget if we hear about something. Keep your eyes peeled too as there are often unplanned things at exits and gas stations. Not only are the photos fun memories, it gets everyone up and out of the car for a few minutes every so often. We are thankful we have traveled a lot and found so many fun, funny, and historic things to pose with.
I’m joining Brian’s Home Blog in the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
You guys always have the best photos of interesting things in your travels and we know that it takes a lot of planning. We love that you make all of your adventures SuperFun for everyone!
Thank you. We have a great time and hope that maybe some other dogs who travel will learn something and have some extra fun too.
Wow? Who knew there were so many great websites to check before you travel.
I’m sure we don’t know the half of them, but it is a good start.
Absolutely one of your best non-birthday-or-Gotcha-Day-related posts ever! As someone else said, you all have been to some great places and shared some unique photos with us! I don’t expect I’ll be traveling with my two hooligans any time in the near future; but I saved that road trip link – and I’ll save this post for sure – just in case!! Thank you!!
It makes driving, especially long drives so much more fun when you have interesting stops planned.
Oh you sure are fun doggies and people and go to great places ~ grateful to have you ~ thanks,
Wishing you good health, laughter and love in your days,
A ShutterBug Explores,
aka (A Creative Harbor)
Thank you. We have to figure out how to get to the lobster trap tree next year, it’s on our list.
You have seen some wonderful things on your travels, they make all the planning worthwhile!
It is fun to see all the things we can find.
What great tips, we have made sure Mama saved this post to use when we get ready for our next road trip!
xoxo,
Rosy & Sunny
You guys and CeCe have seen some cool spots. We would love to do something with Route66 one day, who knows if we will or not.
That was a fun post and good tips too. We always have fun seeing all the great places you get to go. Thanks for joining Angel Brian’s Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
It is fun visiting new spots with new sights and smells.
Thank you for some great tips and ideas! For our last (the first in a really long time) we used https://www.bringfido.com/ to find a motel to stay overnight.
We have used bringfido too, but you have to be careful about their links as sometimes they charge extra. It is a good place to start when we are having trouble finding a spot.
Ohhhh what wonderful photo ops I love the one on the Theodore Roosevelt sign and the elephant too funny
Hugs Cecilia
The Roosevelt sign was pawsome! It is a bummer only three of us were on the trip. The elephant is very funny and we have stopped there several times.
What wonderful tips!!! Thanks!
Thank you.
You guys are travel experts!
We are pretty good at it.
Terrific advice. Usually when I’m traveling with dogs, I just want to get there as quickly as possible (like over the weekend-did not want to get caught up any more in the snow than I did!).
We normally make all our stops on the way out and on the way home, power through unless we have a new route that we planned ahead of time. We did that two years ago coming back from Florida and also back from Montana last year.