How many people do you reckon visit your local park where you hike with your dog every day? 100? 200? If a thousand people a day visit your park every day that would be 365,000 park users a year. Imagine if your park got 25 million visitors every year.
That's how many people go to New York's Central Park every year. It is the most visited park in the United States. And that's only the two-legged count. So what can you expect if you take your dog to America's most popular park?
Everyone knows Central Park but if you have never walked through its 843 acres chances are your image of what it looks like is wrong. Are you picturing rock outcroppings? Rolling hills? Waterfalls in dense woodlands? It's all part of Central Park.
The park covers 6% of the entire island of Manhattan. It would take the better part of a week to cover all 58 miles of fottpaths that would take you past 9000 benches and across 36 individually designed bridges. The park is studded with 26,000 trees and a good part of its acreage is under the water of 14 lakes and ponds. And the genius of Central Park is that every inch of it was crafted not by nature but the hand of man. This naturalistic appearance is the design of architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux exactly 150 years ago.
As improbable as it may seem, even with a typical 70,000 visitors in a day it is possible to hike in relative solitude with your dog in Central Park. The two best places to disappear with your dog are The Rambles in the center of the park where many twisting paths intersect under a tangle of trees and hillocks and in the rugged northern end around Great Hill and the Ravine. Although your dog is not allowed to swim in any of the lakes, ponds or fountains here you can find some doggie splashing on a hot day, including a waterfall in the stream.
Your dog will be trotting on surfaces that range from asphalt to wood chip to dirt and even a bit of paw-friendly grass in the Wildflower Meadow. Dogs are also allowed to share the bridle paths int he park. Best yet, dogs can hike with you off-leash between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m. During the day you will find groups of dog owners congregating with dogs romping off-leash in places like the Great Lawn and elsewhere keep a leash in hand if you are asked to tether your dog.
One must-see in Central Park for your dog is the bronze sculpture of Balto, dedicated to the sled dogs that drove over 1,000 Alaskan winter miles to deliver medicines to stop a diptheria epidemic in Nome, an epic journey that inspired today's great Iditarod Sled Dog Race. One of 29 sculptures in the park, Balto can be found on a rock outcropping ont he main path leading north from the Tisch Children's Zoo.
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