Cape Hatteras National Seashore

places where you won't be able to wipe the wag off your dog's tail - Outer Banks NC

The Park

Cape Hatteras National Seashore stretches down the Outer Banks for 70 sandy miles across three barrier islands, two connected by a toll-free bridge and two connected by a free ferry. Today the seashore is known for its recreational opportunities on the land; historically it has been known for its dangers offshore. A bank of shifting sands known as the Diamond Shoals have caused more than 600 ships to wreck off Cape Hatteras, leading mariners to call the area the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Cape Hatteras was designated America’s first National Seashore by Congress on August 17, 1937 and established on January 12, 1953.

The Walks

There is no better place for loooong hikes with your dog on dune-backed beaches than Cape Hatteras National Seashore but there are also a trio of short nature trails - one on each island - to try with your dog. The best of the lot is in Buxton Woods on Hatteras Island, near the Visitor Center and lighthouse. This trail bounds across pine and oak-covered dunes with marshy wetlands tossed into the mix. The gnarled trees and shrub thickets provide a shady respite from a day on the beach with your dog. Another leafy canine hike is on the Hammock Hills Nature Trail on Ocracoke Island which traipses through a maritime forest on the edge of Pamlico Sound for a bit less than a mile. For an easy hike with your dog in the sunshine and salt air stop at Bodie Island Lighthouse. Here you can explore freshwater ponds and marshes that were artificially created by building dams and dikes and artificial dunes to block the intrusion of ocean salt spray.

Where The Paw Meets The Earth: Soft white sand.

Workout For Your Dog - More than an hour - days if you want.

Swimming - If your dog is intimidated by the crashing Atlantic surf there is also access to Pamlico Sound.

Restrictions On Dogs - Dogs are permitted year-round in the national seashore, save for three small swimming areas.

Something Extra

There are five lighthouses on the Outer Banks your dog can visit - three in the national seashore. The oldest operating lighthouse in North Carolina is the 75-foot tower on Ocracoke Island and the 150-foot Bodie Island Lighthouse dates to 1872. The most famous, and America’s tallest at 208 feet, is the black-and-white swirl-striped Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Its light can be seen 20 miles out to sea and has been reported to have been seen from 51 miles. Although your dog can’t do it, you can climb the 268 steps to the top.

Phone - (252) 473-2111

Website - www.www.nps.gov/caha

Admission Fee - None

Directions - Outer Banks; along Route 12 from the intersection with Route 64 at Whalebone Junction south through Ocracoke Island.

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Assateague National Seashore

places where you won't be able to wipe the wag off your dog's tail - Berlin MD

The Park

The first European settlers - a band of four men - came to Assateague in 1688. At times more than 200 people survived on the shifting sands, fishing or clamming or growing what crops they could. In 1833 the first lighthouse was built but ships still ran aground, including the Dispatch, the official yacht of five American presidents. The cruiser was ruined beyond repair when it reached the shore unscheduled on October 10, 1891. Assateague was connected to the mainland until 1933 when an August hurricane tore open an inlet to the Sinepuxent Bay that now separates Assateague from Ocean City. A bridge to the mainland opened in 1962 and in 1965 Assateague Island became a national seashore.

The Walks

Dogs are not allowed on the three short channel-side nature trails and can not go on lifeguarded beaches but that leaves miles of wide, sandy beaches to hike on with your dog any time of the year. Drive to the furthest parking lot from the entrance gate and head up the boardwalk across the dunes. Make a right and ahead of you will stretch hours of unspoiled canine hiking in the surf and sand. Although the national seashore is within a few hours’ drive of tens of million of Americans don’t be surprised if you have most of this beach to yourself and your dog - especially in the off-season.

Where The Paw Meets The Earth: Sand

Workout For Your Dog - Yes, hiking in sand is tough

Swimming - Absolutely - but pack your own sticks for the dog; not much driftwood stays on the beach

Restrictions On Dogs - Yes in campground but no on the nature trails, the sand north of the national seashore in the adjoing Assateague State Park is off limits to dogs 

Something Extra

Assateague Island is the famous home of the free-roaming “Chincoteague Ponies,” a present-day reminder of Assateague Island’s past. Although no one is certain when or how the ponies first arrived on the island, a popular legend tells of ponies that escaped a shipwrecked Spanish galleon and swam ashore. However, most historians believe that settlers used the island for grazing livestock (including ponies and other farm animals) in the 17th Century to avoid fencing regulations

and taxation. The ponies rule the island and you can see them on the roads or even meet them in the surf.

Phone - (301) 874-2024

Website 

Admission Fee - Yes, good for 7 days

Directions - Berlin, Worcester County; north entrance is at the end of MD 611, eight miles south of Ocean City. When coming on to the island turn right and avoid going straight into the state park. No dogs allowed there.

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Roan Highlands

places where you won't be able to wipe the wag off your dog's tail - Burnsville NC

The Park

Roan Mountain, dressed in a dark green spruce-fir forest and including the world’s largest natural rhododendron garden and the longest stretch of grassy bald in the Appalachian range, has long been considered a treasure of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1870 John T. Wilder, a Union Army General famed for his command of the Civil War “Lightning Brigade,” bought up 7,000 acres along the top and sides of Roan Mountain. Wilder made his money firing the first blast furnaces in the South after the war and his ironworks manufactured rails for the railroads, including his own narrow gauge railway he built to bring tourists to the top of Roan Mountain. In 1885, Wilder constructed the luxurious Cloudland Hotel on the mountaintop, promoted as a health resort that was frequented by captains of American industry and European nobility. The hotel was abandoned by 1910, sunk by exorbitant operating costs, and the mountain’s forests were subsequently logged off. When the timber was gone Roan Mountain became part of the Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests in 1941.

The Walks

Roan Mountain is not actually a peak but a high ridge that runs five miles from a low point of 5,500 feet at Carver’s Gap to 6,285 feet at Roan High Knob. The knob is accessed from a moderate 1.2-mile canine hike along the Cloudland Trail. In mid-June the hundreds of acres of Catawba rhododendrons erupt into a magenta riot, luring thousands of visitors to the mountain-top to travel through the canyons of blooms on a paved trail. The two-mile road from Carver’s Gap to the gardens is closed from the end of October through March but you can hike - or ski - in with your dog as the case may be.

As remarkable as Roan Mountain is, your dog will likely prefer the canine hiking on the opposite side of Carver’s Gap as the Appalachian Trail crosses over three grassy balds in less than two hours of hiking. The third, Grassy Ridge Bald, rises to an elevation of 6,189 feet, making it the second highest grassy bald in the Appalachian Mountains. In fact, this is the only stretch of the Appalachian Trail that rises above 6,000 feet between Old Black 150 miles to the south and Mount Washington in New Hampshire, 1,500 miles to the north. The views for your dog, of course, are stunning.

Where The Paw Meets The Earth: Paw-friendly natural trails

Workout For Your Dog - Hours, days, weeks of hiking possible

Swimming - None

Restrictions On Dogs - Dogs are welcome to enjoy the views from the Roan Highlands.

Something Extra

Botanists have been fascinated with Roan Mountain as long as there have been botanists. In 1775, 36-year old William Bartram traveled through here on an epic journey from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains all the way to the Mississippi River, collecting specimens and sketching plants. He became the country’s first nature writer in 1791 with the publication of Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, an account of his adventure. Andre Micheaux followed in 1794, discovering several alpine species rarely found outside of the New England and Canadian latitudes. In 1799, John Fraser explored Roan Mountain, collecting specimens of rhododendron and noting the existence of the fir tree that now carries his name. Asa Gray, considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century found a lily on Roan Mountain that bears his name.

Phone Number - (828) 682-6146

Website - fs.usda.gov/recarea/nfsnc

Admission Fee - Vehicle parking fee at Roan Mountain; none for the Appalachian Trail lot at Carver’s Gap

Directions - Pisgah National Forest; from Burnsville take 197N to Red Hill, turn left towards Johnson City, TN (Route 226N). Go 3 miles to Fork Mountain Road #1338; turn right and go to the end of the road. Turn left onto 261N and follow to Carver’s Gap and Roan Mountain.

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The Pinnacle

places where you won't be able to wipe the wag off your dog's tail - Hamburg PA

The Park

The Appalachian Trail through Pennsylvania is not popular with many thru-hikers, derided as “the place where boots go to die” due to the rocky nature of the mountains. But one spot all agree is worth the purchase is the Pinnacle - a jumble of rock ledges offering a true panoramic view of the wooded Blue Mountain and the contrasting cultivated fields of the Cumberland Valley below.

The Walks

This is not a casual canine hike. Expect to devote a solid five hours to completing the 9-mile loop to the Pinnacle and back. The going is rough and rocky and athletic dogs only need apply. Tackling the loop counter-clockwise offers two routes to the Pinnacle: the rocky Valley Rim Trail (the path is not true to its name - there are no views from the trail) and a shortcut on a switch-backing access road to a mountaintop observatory (it is not a major time-saving shortcut). Your anticipation for the views at the Pinnacle will be whetted with a stop at Pulpit Rock across from the observatory. The mountain climbing ends at Pulpit Rock but not the treacherous footing for your dog as the trail to the Pinnacle is particularly rock-studded here. The return down the mountain is best taken down a fire road along the hemlock-draped Furnace Creek. This trail is a completely different experience from the climb up and gives the loop a feel of two canine hikes for the day.

Where The Paw Meets The Earth: Much trotting on rocky patches with uneven pawfalls and considerable boulder-hopping in spots

Workout For Your Dog - You may not find a better one

Swimming - Furnace Creek is fast and fun but not for swimming

Restrictions On Dogs - No dogs in the reservoir

Something Extra

Rocks are certainly a theme of a hike to the Pinnacle. From Pulpit Rock and the Pinnacle you get a commanding view of a river of boulders 500 feet wide and a half-mile long known as the Blue Rocks. These erosion-resistant quartzite boulders are souvenirs of the last ice age when powerful glaciers left them behind.

Phone - None

Website - None

Admission Fee - None

Directions - Hamburg, Berks County; northeast of town. Take I-78 east into town or Route 61 north. Take Fourth Street east out of Hamburg for two miles and make a left on Reservoir Road. Cross Mountain Road to the end of the road and parking at the Hamburg Reservoir.

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Hampton National Historic Site

places where you won't be able to wipe the wag off your dog's tail - Baltimore MD

The Park

When Captain Charles Ridgely, heir to an iron and shipping fortune, began construction on Hampton mansion in 1783 this now highly suburbanized part of Baltimore County was so remote that wolves howled at night and locals ridiculed the project in the wilderness as “Ridgely’s Folly.” In 1948, after housing six generations of Ridgelys, the Georgian mansion became the first site in the National Park Service to be recognized for its architectural merit and not its historical significance. Once a sprawling, self-sufficient empire of 25,000 acres, all that remains of the original Hampton estate is 63 acres.

The Walks

The elegant stuccoed mansion is off limits to your dog but that is no reason he can’t strut around the grounds like royalty. He can trot down the Great Terrace behind the house, once used for bowling on the green, and into the formal English boxwood garden. Where once a 700-tree orchard stood is an open field ideal for a game of fetch. Scattered among the 200 historic specimen trees are original outbuildings - stables that once housed Maryland’s fastest horses, a citrus-growing orangery and slave quarters. On the front lawn is a grass-covered brick dome enclosing a 33-foot deep pit that was

used as an ice house.

Where The Paw Meets The Earth: Grass and brick and cobble

Workout For Your Dog - No

Swimming - None

Restrictions On Dogs - No dogs in the mansion

Something Extra

One wonders what Charles Ridgely would think of his final resting place were he able to see it today. When placed inside the family’s Greek Revival vault after his death, his land holdings included enough land to make up half of present-day Baltimore. Yet the Ridgely family cemetery now squeezes against an interstate highway with a view of a neighbor’s backyard play set. Still, the brick-walled family cemetery is a unique historical destination open to your dog.

Phone - None

Website

Admission Fee - None

Directions - Towson, Baltimore County; from I-695, take Exit 27-B north (Dulaney Valley Road) and make an immediate right on Hampton Lane to the entrance on the right.

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Elk Neck State Park

places where you won't be able to wipe the wag off your dog's tail - Northeast MD

The Park

At Turkey Point the Northeast and Elk rivers have pinched a finger of land in the Upper Chesapeake Bay so violently that it swells to more than 100 feet above the water. The result is Elk Neck State Park, a vibrant mix of sandy beaches, marshlands and hardwood forests.

The Walks

There are five main trails at Elk Neck State Park. None is longer than two miles and all can be covered in a leisurely afternoon of canine hiking. The White Trail through the Thackery Swamp is a self-guiding nature trail. The Black Trail skirts the shoreline of the Elk River and the waters of the Chesapeake Bay can be reached from the Blue Trail at Turkey Point. You start your explorations on an old access road high above the waters that soon turns towards the Old Turkey Point Lighthouse. The various footpaths radiate off the main trail across the peninsula.

Where The Paw Meets The Earth: Dirt roads and woods paths

Workout For Your Dog - Gradual climbs to Turkey Point

Swimming - Spirited dog swimming on small sandy beaches on the Chesapeake Bay

Restrictions On Dogs - No dogs on the North East Beach

Something Extra

A lighthouse was authorized by Congress in 1831 and two years later a tower and keeper’s quarters was situated on a 100-foot bluff where the North East and Elk Rivers converge. Originally, the 35-foot tower had a panel of red glass to warn ships they were approaching the shallows. The beacon was visible for 13 miles and was the highest of 74 lighthouses on the Chesapeake Bay. The keeper’s quarters are gone but the tower and spectacular views remain atop the grassy bluffs.

Phone - (410) 287-5333

Website 

Admission Fee - None

Directions - Northeast, Cecil County; from I-95 exit onto Route 272 (North East Road)and go south 2.4 miles to Route 7 (East Cecil Avenue). Cross State Route 7, stay on Route 272 and go 11 miles to the end of the road and the park.

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