WASHINGTON

Unless your dog is tackling the mythic Pacific Crest Trail there will be no canine hiking in Mount Rainier and North Cascades national parks. Things aren’t much better in Olympic National Park but dogs are allowed on the log-littered beaches in Kalaloch which is a nice bonus. Most of the Olympic Peninsula is publicly owned and the Olympic National Forest will look just like the national park to your dog. Washington’s 212 state parks - only New York and California have more - help dampen any doggie disappointment at their bigger brothers by being tail-friendly. Seattle-area parks are also extra welcoming to trail dogs, including more than a dozen off-leash areas. Who needs the national parks?  When producers wanted to film a movie version of Jack London’s immortal adventure yarn Call of the Wild in 1934 the Noosack River in Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest is where they came; the towering arboreal titans of the Evergreen State - Douglas fir, Western hemlock, and Western red cedar - have been protected here ever since. San Juan is the most popular of the hundreds of islands that dot the waters between the United States and Canada and dogs are free to hike and swim in the national historic park of the once hotly disputed island.

The Best Day Hike You Can Take With Your Dog In Washington

Thunder Knob Trail
Ross Lake National Recreation Area • Diablo

Despite its imposing name, Thunder Knob is one of the smallest and easiest peaks to conquer in the rugged North Cascades, a land of busy glaciers. Thunder Knob is also one of the rare summits Seaman is permitted to tag in the North Cascades.

The Thunder Knob Trail kicks off with a heavy plank bridge across the energetic waters of Colonial Creek (taken down in the winter for protection) and then deposits Seaman on one of the best groomed trails he will ever hike on in a national forest. Wide and level with nary a root in sight, this footpath is so pleasant your dog will scarcely notice the nearly 500 feet in elevation gain on this 1.8-mile out-and-back hike.

What demands notice is how impossibly green this stretch of hemlock forest is. The spellbinding greenery continues into the higher and drier elevations of lodgepole pine. As the forest opens up Thunder Knob begins to yield views of the ragged granite peaks all around you.

The Thunder Knob Trail is a four-star canine hike even without its payout at the end - your purchase of the spectacular view of Diablo Lake. The deep turquoise colors are the result of fine glacial silt washed into the water. But this is no souvenir of a distant ice age; Diablo Lake is a reservoir created after the construction of a hydroelectric dam in 1930. Stay as long as you want atop Thunder Knob - there is a log bench on the overlook to sit with Seaman.

HIKING TIME: 1-2 hours

(from the book 300 Day Hikes To Take With Your Dog Before He Tires You Out: Trails where you won’t be able to wipe the wag off your dog’s tail)