A Bark In The Park-Doggin' America's Big Trees

By Doug Gelbert

Every year an estimated 29 million people travel with their dogs. But what happens when you actually want to leave the hotel room with your dog? This series of books is not about traveling with your dog to tiny, fenced-in dog parks or disappearing into the wilderness; it is about places you want to see, and taking your dog to share your fun. Here we track down America's Big Trees...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Gelbert
• Release date: Nov 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458127907

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A Bark In The Park – Doggin' America's Big Trees

Another Vacation Idea For Your Dog from hikewithyourdog.com

published by Cruden Bay Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 by Cruden Bay Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

When European settlers arrived on these shores virgin forest stretched nearly unbroken to the Mississippi River. Early Americans were extremely adept at clearing land for farms and stripping forests for building materials. By 1900, out of five trees that stood in Colonial days, only one survived. You could travel with your dogs for days and hardly ever see a big tree. Today, much of the land has been reforested. Most eastern states whose slopes were cut bare in the 1800s now boast of more than 50% forestland. In a land of second- and third-growth woodlands old growth forests where trees have stood unmolested since the dawn of the America have become magical places. Old growth forests conjure up images of huge trees but these ancient forests are best characterized by their diversity. The woods are speckled with large snags that have broken in storms and mammoth trunks of decaying dead trees teeming with life litter the forest floor. A woodland hike through an old growth forest is like no other hike you can take with your dog. Here are some of the best...

Doggin’ America’s Big Trees – East

Cook Forest State Park (Cooksburg, Pennsylvania).

Pennsylvania’s white pine and Eastern hemlock forests were the nation’s most valuable resource in the mid-1800s. The timber built America and the bark tanned leather. Two of the largest sawmills in the world operated in the Pennsylvania woods. So much pine and hemlock were harvested the mountainsides were stripped bare. When the woods were depleted, towns would disappear and new ones spring up over the next mountain. The pine and hemlock never came back. The forests that cover northern