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May 19, 2025

Paws on the Trail: The Best Dog-Friendly Hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains

Planning a trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park with your furry friend? While many trails restrict dogs, the Smokies still offer several dog-friendly hikes and scenic drives perfect for adventurous pups and their humans. From easy riverside walks on the Oconaluftee River Trail to scenic drives like Cades Cove Loop Road and Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, this guide covers the best pet-friendly trails and outdoor experiences to help you explore the Smokies together. Discover insider tips, local spots, and must-visit places to make your Smoky Mountains dog adventure unforgettable!

January 11, 2022

14 Fun Things To Do In Asheville, North Carolina

One of the coolest small cities on the East Coast, Asheville has a relaxed boho vibe that I love! It’s weird and that’s just the way locals want to keep it. The city has a backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains and an insane number of craft breweries. Asheville is a refreshingly unique combination of hipster meets outdoor enthusiasts…

July 22, 2021

How To Spend 3 Days In Asheville, North Carolina

This weird and charming city has tons of accolades including landing on “The South’s Prettiest Cities” list and “The South’s Best Food Cities” list, respectively. After visiting Asheville it’s easy to see why everyone raves about it. Not only is it a city filled with food and art, but it’s incredibly dog friendly too (bestill my heart)…

May 11, 2021

Roaring Forks: 11 Reasons To Visit

There are so many reasons to visit Roaring Forks Motor Nature Trail on your next trip to the Smokies…

April 6, 2021

Is Great Smoky Mountains National Park Dog Friendly?

Find out if Great Smoky Mountains is dog friendly and 12 fun things to do with your pups near the park…

August 10, 2020

One Day in Cherokee, North Carolina

Don’t skip Cherokee, North Carolina on your next trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park…

Hi! I'm Vanessa, a 30 something, sunset chasing traveler. I'm here to inspire you to travel wherever, whenever, and with whoever you can. My Huskies, Loki and Freya are usually along for the ride. I have a soul that likes to wander, a desire to experience the unknown, and a curiousity to discover things off the beaten path. I hope you'll stick around for awhile!

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Recent Posts

  • Acadia National Park October Guide: Fall Colors, Weather & What to Pack
  • The Bar Harbor Cheat Sheet: Everything You Need To Know Before You Visit
  • The Complete Guide to the Best Bars in Bar Harbor, Maine
  • The Complete Guide To Getting Out On Frenchmans Bay
  • The Best Sunset Spots in Acadia National Park

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Vanessa and her two Siberian Huskies in front of the Badlands National Park rock formations in South Dakota

Is Badlands​ National Park Dog Friendly? (2026 Guide)

One Fall Day In Shenandoah National Park

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🍁 October in Acadia is beautiful. It’s also absolu 🍁 October in Acadia is beautiful. It’s also absolutely unhinged. 🍁

45 minutes to get through the gate on a Saturday. Parking lots full by 9. Infrastructure built for a fraction of the people who now want to see the same six viewpoints in the same six weeks.

And yet…I get it.

Red maple and birch against pink granite and the Atlantic. The whole island turns into the New England postcard living rent-free in everyone’s head.

I stayed on Mount Desert Island for six months. Here’s what I’d actually do:

🍁 Aim for the first two weeks of October, but watch the foliage instead of trusting a calendar.

🍁 Go Tuesday–Thursday. A Wednesday and a Saturday are basically different parks.

🍁 Get in by 7 a.m. Cadillac requires a $6 reservation through October 25, and those drop two days ahead at 10 a.m. ET. Set the alarm.

🍁 Have a Plan B for parking. Jordan Pond, Sand Beach, Thunder Hole can all be full ridiculously early on a good day.

🍁 Bring the dog. 100+ miles of trails + 45 miles of carriage roads = one of the best national parks in the country for dogs. I will die on this hill. Plus Sand Beach and Echo Lake Beach are dog friendly by October. 

🍁 And when Park Loop Road starts feeling like a parking lot with scenery, go to Schoodic. Same park. Mainland. A fraction of the people. Or the Quiet Side because Ship Harbor is gorgeous in the fall! 

Most importantly: you do not have to see everything.

Pick three things. Do them slowly. Let the island be beautiful without turning your vacation into a scavenger hunt.

That’s the October Acadia trip I’d actually recommend.

Full October guide is on the blog, foliage tracking, what to pack, dog-friendly hikes + where to eat. 

🍁 Comment Fall and I’ send you a direct link! 🍁

Full ridiculously informative guide coming this week! 🍁
Everyone drives past this one 🦬⛰️ It’s out on I-9 Everyone drives past this one 🦬⛰️

It’s out on I-94 in western North Dakota, and most people treat it as a gas stop on the way to Montana. Which is how I ended up standing on an overlook with a bison in the valley below me and not one other person in sight.

That doesn’t happen in Yellowstone. It doesn’t really happen anywhere anymore.

Here’s what I love about it. The park is split into three separate units, South, North, and the Elkhorn Ranch site in between, and the whole point of it is preservation. 

Not development, not viewpoints engineered for photos. The land is protected so it stays the way it was. Which means the cottonwoods along the river, the sage, the bison working through it, that’s the same country Roosevelt was looking at.

He came out here in 1883 and stayed after his wife and his mother died on the same day. Said later he’d never have been president without North Dakota. He’s my favorite president, and standing out you can just see it. The place did something to him.

It’s not pretty exactly. It’s big and hard and quiet and it doesn’t perform for you.

Go before everyone figures it out.
📍Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota 🦬
📸 of me: @that_nomad_brian
Every national park is free on August 25. Here’s h Every national park is free on August 25. Here’s how to actually enjoy it instead of sitting in a line at one! 👇

It’s the Park Service’s 110th birthday (Happy Birthday 🎉), which is a genuinely great reason to waive entry. The catch is that this year the free day is dropping into peak season. 

Which means everyone else had the same idea you did.

That’s fine. It just means planning like it.

Be at the gate before 7 or after 4. Skip the park everyone’s racing to, a monument, a lakeshore, or a national seashore is free that day too, and you’ll actually get a parking spot. 

Then go slow on purpose. Crowded days are bad for covering ground and good for sitting still. One overlook you sit at for twenty minutes beats five you photograph through a windshield.

One heads up: fee-free days are for US residents only this year, so if you’ve got family visiting from abroad, they’ll still pay at the gate.

Pick one. Get there early. Stay longer than you planned.

The parks are there for you to enjoy 😉 Remember that!
90 minutes. Slowly moving through Lamar Valley beh 90 minutes. Slowly moving through Lamar Valley behind a bison herd who preferred the road…

Honestly, at around an hour I was starting to get a little annoyed. Then I wasn’t. 

Because here’s what I’ve learned in three years of this: the schedule is the thing that ruins the trip, not the delay. You didn’t drive two thousand miles to be on time. Nobody has ever gotten to the end of a road trip and wished the bison had moved faster.

Also, and I’ll get into this later this week, that jam is the only reason I was still sitting in that valley when a grizzly walked out of the treeline. First one I’ve seen that close.

So, here is my new stance: this is the only acceptable form of traffic for me 🦬
Billable as wellness. Free. 🌲⛰️ Just a windshield, Billable as wellness. Free. 🌲⛰️
Just a windshield, a mountain range that keeps getting bigger, and a song I have known every word to since I was sixteen.

📍Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 🏔️
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