When I first sat down to begin planning our cross-country road trip with three dogs, I had no idea how to do it. I began with an obvious math problem: the total hours it will take to drive from Seattle to Buffalo divided by the maximum hours the dogs and I are capable of being trapped in a car, which is 8. Now I knew how many days we will be on the road and when we need to leave. We have a specific date we must arrive for my cousins wedding reception and I gave us a just in case buffer of a day and a half. I rented the car. I stared at the map. Now what?
When I found a park or even a town that was the right driving distance, through my inefficient trial and error system, I began specific research. In a third tab, I did a Google search for campgrounds. Once I found out there was a campground at the park I wanted or nearby, I either searched the park or campgrounds website for their pet policy or did a Google search for that campgrounds pet policy. And in a fourth tab, I checked reviews of the park and campground. If I could not |
I made a pretty big deal out of picking the campsites I reserved. Were I not traveling with three dogs, I would have just picked a site, maybe a number I liked, or the right distance from the bathroom and be done. But, despite what very good and seasoned campers 'R' Blood on the Tracks Boys are, they bark at passers-by, noisy fellow campers, squirrels, pine needles falling from a tree, etc. They usually quiet down on command. Usually. So in a effort to ease our brief stays at the campgrounds along the way, I made sure to reserve quieter, corner spots, as best I could. I compared campground maps to satellite maps to make sure the spots I reserved had privacy and were not near busy pathways or worse, roads.