Northern California to NJ with a dog

[rmillstein]

I'm looking for advice on a good route from Northern California to New Jersey with two people and a dog. We'd like to stop for occasional hikes, and will need dog-friendly hotels to stay in. Other dog-friendly establishments (restaurants, etc.) are a plus. Thanks for any suggestions!

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA forum!

I suggest you head over to the planning section of this website. There are a number of articles, like this one, as well as guidebook (hotel) recommendations.

[rmillstein]

Thank you -- those are both helpful resources. I'm still looking for route and activity suggestions, though, if anyone has them.

[Midwest Michael]

I-80 would be the basic, straightforward route. There are any number of potential detours depending upon your interests and how much time you have available. Of course no matter where you go, there will always be good places to stop for a quick break. Here is a list of ideas every couple hours along I-80 and the other major interstates, as well as more ideas specific to I-80.

[PNW Judy]

This post lists several different online resources for traveling with pets you might want to review.

I'm still looking for route and activity suggestions, though, if anyone has them.

There are dozens of potential routes for your trip. All good. The right one for you would be the one that takes you past things you want to see and fits your timeframe. You have given us little information for us to give you decent recommendations. At minimum, we would need to know how many days you have for this trip, what types of things you want to see/do along the way, what interests you, and if there are any specific things you've heard about that you really want to see.

Actually, the best way for you to get started with planning your route is to get a good sized map of the US that shows routes, cities, national parks, state parks, and other places of interest. Pour over it marking anything that jumps out at you as something you'd like to see and see if you can start visualizing the routes you'd need to drive to get from one place to another. Get your friends involved in this so everybody is in agreement about what you'd like to see.

Anyway, we'd be glad to help more once we have more information to go by.

[rmillstein]

I-80 would be the basic, straightforward route. There are any number of potential detours depending upon your interests and how much time you have available. Of course no matter where you go, there will always be good places to stop for a quick break. Here is a list of ideas every couple hours along I-80 and the other major interstates, as well as more ideas specific to I-80.

A very belated thank you for this reply. We did end up taking I-80 going east, though we took a different route for the return, and your list of parks was *extremely* helpful. There were a number of true gems on that list (of course, we didn't see them all!). We found places to hike and beaches where we could run around and go for a quick dip. We learned, though, that states really vary in how good the signage is for their state parks, so getting directions ahead of time was essential, as was (in most cases) finding the visitor's center first thing. Almost all of the state parks were dog friendly, too. :-)

[PNW Judy]

Would you care to share more details? Like...your favorite places? Unusual sights or experiences? Great restaurants? Whatever you wanna share, we're always happy to hear more about how things went.