Photos of Pet-Friendly Travel Spots Families Will Love

Travelling with a dog is a whole new world of complicated planning, awkward accommodation searches, and standing unnecessarily on a grass verge at a motorway services for far longer than you would ever have predicted. But the joy of seeing your dog run across a beach for the first time, or seeing your children tumble out of the car and instinctively reach for the lead, is well worth the added hassle.

The places below are the ones where the whole family, including the pets, feel at home. And the places that will yield the photos you’ll want to keep.

Acadia National Park, Maine

Dogs are allowed on most of the trails, and so Acadia is in a category of its own for US national parks. The carriage roads, a series of gravel trails developed in the early 1900s, are ideal for families with dogs, as they go through the forest and along the edges of the lake for many miles with no road crossings.

Children can ride their bikes, and the dog runs alongside, or the whole family can walk together at whatever pace is dictated by the shortest legs in the party. The rocky coast is the backdrop for all of this, with pine trees, granite, ocean, and a dog with its nose going full speed.

Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville has developed a real reputation for being one of the most pet-friendly places in the South. The streets of downtown Asheville are pleasant to walk through, with water stations at many stores and restaurants, and outdoor seating areas that include well-behaved dogs as a normal occurrence.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is close by, with parking areas that provide nice walks through the mountains with photo ops that will look great in any season. The fall foliage is the kind of thing that causes you to stop talking in the middle of a sentence.

Treats will be needed, as there will be many photo ops of the children posing with the dog in front of the scenery.

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Dogs are allowed off-lead on Carmel Beach, which is one of the most photographed stretches of California coastline. White sand, cypress trees, the Pacific, and a collection of dogs in various states of joy running in and out of the surf — it makes for a scene that looks almost staged.

The town itself is small, architecturally charming, and very comfortable with pets. Many of the boutique shops actively invite dogs inside.

Children tend to spend the beach time in the water while the dog investigates everything else. The light here in the late afternoon, especially in autumn, is particularly good for photographs.

Leavenworth, Washington

Leavenworth is a small town in the Cascade foothills that was redesigned in the 1960s to look like a Bavarian village, and it commits to that identity with considerable enthusiasm. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does — especially in winter, when snow settles on the alpine-style buildings and the surrounding mountains and the whole place looks like something from a storybook.

Dogs are welcome throughout the town and on the network of trails that fan out into the hills above it. Family photographs taken here tend to look implausibly picturesque, which is either appealing or suspicious depending on your outlook.

Bar Harbor, Maine

The town of Bar Harbor sits at the edge of Acadia National Park and functions as its gateway community. Dogs are common here, welcomed by most restaurants on their outdoor terraces and by the shops along Main Street.

The bar, a natural gravel causeway that appears at low tide connecting the town to a nearby island, is one of those places families return to specifically for photographs — children running across, dog splashing at the edges, the Porcupine Islands sitting in the bay behind. Timing matters: the bar disappears underwater at high tide, so check the schedule before you plan your visit around it.

Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada

The lake itself is the draw — that particular shade of blue-green that looks edited even in real life. Dogs are welcome on several of the lake’s beaches, including some of the quieter stretches on the Nevada side, and the surrounding national forest trails allow leashed dogs throughout.

In summer, families swim while the dog wades in the shallows. In winter, snow makes the forest trails look entirely different but equally worth photographing.

The elevation means temperatures stay cooler than the surrounding lowlands even in July and August, which makes long walks far more comfortable for both dogs and small children.

Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts

DepositPhotos-Cape Cod National Seashore, MA, USA – Sept 5, 2018: A welcoming signboard at the entry point of preserve park — Photo by CheriAlguire

The National Seashore allows leashed dogs on all its ocean beaches year-round, and off-lead from mid-September through May. That seasonal off-lead access is significant — autumn on Cape Cod is genuinely beautiful, with the crowds gone, the light going golden, and the beach essentially to yourself.

The outer beaches here face the open Atlantic, so the waves are real and the horizon is wide. Photographs taken on the Cape Cod beaches in October have a particular quality: clear skies, long shadows, and the kind of quiet that makes children look thoughtful rather than manic.

Sedona, Arizona

Sedona is stunning in photographs and equally stunning in person, which is rarer than you’d think. The red rock formations — Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte — frame every view in a way that makes almost any photograph look composed.

Dogs are permitted on many of the trails here, including the Bell Rock Pathway, which is wide, relatively flat, and gives you close access to those formations. The light in Sedona changes dramatically throughout the day, with early morning and late afternoon producing the deepest reds.

Families with dogs often find the early starts easier to manage here than anywhere else because the payoff arrives so quickly.

Stowe, Vermont

Stowe in autumn is the kind of place that converts skeptics of leaf-peeping into enthusiastic participants. The village sits in a valley beneath Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak, and when the maples turn in October, the whole scene shifts to a palette of red, orange, and gold.

The Stowe Recreation Path runs along the West Branch River for about five miles through town, passing meadows and farmland, and dogs are welcome throughout. It’s flat enough for young children on bikes, interesting enough for older ones on foot, and scenic enough that the adults want to stop every few minutes to take photographs.

This is the kind of trail where someone always ends up with a completely unexpected good shot.

Savannah, Georgia

Savannah’s squares — the small, tree-lined park spaces scattered through the historic district — are some of the most photographed urban spaces in the American South. Dogs are welcome in all of them, and families tend to spend long afternoons moving from square to square, watching the Spanish moss shift in whatever breeze comes in off the river.

The city has a slow, unhurried atmosphere that suits travelling with children and pets better than most. Forsyth Park, the largest green space in the centre of town, has a fountain that appears in thousands of photographs and a wide open lawn where dogs can stretch out properly. Early morning, before the heat builds in summer, the light through the live oaks is extraordinary.

Bend, Oregon

Bend has accumulated a well-deserved reputation as an outdoor-focused city that takes dogs seriously. The Deschutes River Trail runs along the river through town for several miles, allowing leashed dogs throughout, and the high desert landscape on the city’s edges — juniper trees, volcanic rock formations, wide open sky — provides a visual context that doesn’t look like anywhere else in the country.

The river access points are good spots for children and dogs in summer. Tumalo State Park, just north of town, has camping with pet-friendly sites and a stretch of river beach where dogs wade while children build things out of river stones.

Jekyll Island, Georgia

DepositPhotos-The Jekyll Island Sign for this Barrier Island in Glynn County, Georgia — Photo by nflane

Jekyll Island is a barrier island off the coast of Georgia, connected by a causeway, and it has a special ambiance of being a place that has been kept quiet. Development is carefully controlled by state law, so there are no large resort complexes, and the beaches are uncrowded.

Dogs are allowed on the beach on a leash, and the hard sand at the water’s edge makes it a pleasure to explore with push chairs and small children. The historic district, a collection of late Victorian buildings from when it was a winter retreat for wealthy American families, makes for a quirky location for photos.

At low tide, beaches in this region offer some of the best shell-gathering on the East Coast.

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Haystack Rock is 235 feet out of the sand at Cannon Beach, located directly in the surf. It is the most photographed landmark along the Oregon coast.

It is a backdrop that makes almost anything in the foreground look good: family, dog, low tide, the rock in the background. Dogs are allowed in Cannon Beach year-round on a lead.

The town is small and genuinely pleasant, with good food available and the type of outdoor equipment stores that encourage you to buy things you don’t need. The Oregon coast is often overcast, which is better for photographers than direct sunlight.

The beach is directly west, which is good for a sunset when the clouds cooperate.

When the dog is in the frame

The quality of the photographs that families take at pet-friendly locations is better than the quality of the photographs they take at other locations. Not because the scenery is particularly photogenic, but because the dog brings the whole family into the frame.

The kids stop posing for the camera, and the adults kneel to the dog’s level. Everyone’s attention is directed away from the camera.

The best travel photographs tend to be the candid ones, and a dog running into the frame, or sitting serenely between two children, or shaking the saltwater from its fur, has a way of inducing that without anyone’s conscious effort.