Northern California includes the Monterey Bay area, the Tahoe area and Sonoma County to the north, the Sierra Nevadas to the east, Lodi to the south, the Bay Area to the west, with Napa Valley and Sacramento in the center. Whether you want to travel in style (luxury), rough it up, or anything in between, you can find all kinds of scenic and fun things to do with your fur kids in these very friendly to dogs cities. With Memorial Day coming up on May 25, this list will give you a lot of different options for weekend dog-cations.
We just moved to Vallejo and nearby Benecia seems to be a very dog friendly place so that is where we will start off our list. Some places have more to talk about and some have less. This post will just cover Benecia, since it is new to us. In other blog posts, we will link to places we have already covered in other blog posts, so we will group some together.
Our countdown to fido friendly Memorial weekend begins today.
1. Pet Friendly Benecia (artists and their canine loving town)
BENICIA Heading south on Interstate 680, just past the Benicia city limit sign, you’ll see a giant billboard, all blue sky and golden sunsets, touting this very city as promising “a great day by the bay.”
Travel to its downtown waterfront, where boutiques and antiques shops beckon, where artists live and work
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/travel/article2591729.html#storylink=cpy
One of Benicia’s main selling points – namely, its slow pace, homey feel, lack of pretension and centralized location, easily within an hour’s drive – to the masses of stressed-out city dwellers in San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento.
Many, no doubt, are traveling with dogs. Up and down First Street, dogs and their human companions roamed. From a pair of bichon frisés named Peekaboo and Freeway, to Yorkie mixes named Olivina and Georgie, dogs took advantage of water bowls left out for them. They can explore (leashed) on the city green near the waterfront and frolic (unleashed) on the small beaches just off the First Street Promenade.
Skip and Dana Godwin, with black lab mixes Drake and Olive in tow, said merchants don’t bat an eye when someone walks through the door with a four-legged friend.
“It’s like Sausalito in that respect,” Skip said. “A lot of the restaurants have outdoor seating, and that attracts people with dogs. All the B&Bs and hotels are dog-friendly, too.”
Lynne Parella, owner of the upscale wine and craft beer bar, The Chill, allows dogs on her patio, as does the First Street Cafe, the restaurant at the Union Hotel and other eateries. Such openness to canines has earned Benicia the status of the fourth most “dog-friendly” city in the nation by Dog Fancy Magazine.
James Long, owner of Pups ’n’ Purrz on First Street, helped organize the annual A Great Dog Day by the Bay, featuring a Disc Dog competition, a toss-and-fetch tournament, an owner-dog look-alike contest and a dog beauty pageant. One item Long has trouble keeping in stock is cod sticks ($1).
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/travel/article2591729.html#storylink=cpy
Benicia: First Street Beach
OFF-LEASH DOG BEACH. Benicia is a waterside city located in the San Francisco Bay area just east of Vallejo. It has two off-leash beaches at the foot of First Street in the downtown area – one at the Promenade and the other south of the turnaround.
http://www.unionhotelbenicia.com/index.html
707-746-0110
http://www.bestwesternbenicia.com
Small pets are allowed, with a $25.00 non-refundable deposit per pet
Benicia Walking Tour:
30 points of interests
Waterfront Promenade and First Street Green
Pedestrian and bike trails parallel to the waterfront, from Benicia Marina to West 14th Street
Benicia State Recreation Area
1.5 Miles of the outskirts of Benicia on I-780. Take the Columbus Parkway Exit.
707 648-1911
Carquinez Straight
Bay Area Ridge Trail: Vallejo Benicia Area
The city of 28,000 residents — and an estimated 2,000 canines — is ranked fourth among the nation’s top dog-friendly towns, according to Dog Fancy magazine’s annual Dog Town USA contest.
Criteria used to select the winning cities included plenty of dog-friendly open spaces and dog parks, events celebrating dogs and their owners, ample veterinary care, abundant pet-supply and other services and municipal laws that support and protect all pets.
Benicia also has an ample number of veterinarians
Suisun Valley, a verdant agricultural area with many dog-friendly wineries, farmstands and even pumpkin patches where you can sample home-grown produce and introduce Fido to new sights and smells.
What’s a waterfront town without a dog-friendly beach or two? The pair of splash spots on the Carquinez Strait at the end of First Street in Benicia are nothing spectacular, but hey, they’re wet—and the community spirit behind them counts for a lot.
Dogs swim at First Street beach
in Benicia is a community of dog lovers who worked hard to create amenities such as Phenix Community Dog Park, and a pair of leash-free beaches on the Carquinez Strait at the edge of downtown. Many shops and restaurants along First Street, the main drag, welcome wet noses at their sidewalk tables. “You can get anything from pizza to filet mignon with your dog by your side,” says Canine Coalition founder Gretchen Burgess. Favorite meet-up spots include the dog-friendly Union Hotel and the eclectic First Street Café. Work up a pant by hiking the San Francisco Bay Trail along the coast, or trek from the dog park up to city-owned Lake Herman.
http://www.visitbenicia.org/businesses/restaurants
http://www.beniciadogs.com/dog_park_maps.php
http://www.visitbenicia.org/visitor/itineraries
