So as many of you probably know, the BayAreaSnowDogs are part of several husky social groups here in the SF Bay Area, one of which is a very awesome facebook group "SF Husky Meetup" (you can find them here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SFHuskyMeetup/ ). Recently, the group has been blowing up with new weekly meetups, but unfortunately most are in the East and North Bay, and most are in the evenings. This presented a problem for us, since I work super early and the pups and I usually do our shenanigans in the afternoons. We dont mind driving, but we do at like 7PM (when that's when I am getting ready for bed hahaha).

Thus, our day today was devoted to finding a suitable dog park for hosting a weekday afternoon meetup for us South Bay peeps. The location had to meet a few key criteria:

Good parking! Sometimes we have 20+ huskies at these meetups, so it had to have good accessible abundant parking.
Space! This is key. Huskies are biiiiig runners, and they need as much space as possible to run it out. Zoomies take up a LOT of room when you're a sled dog haha.
Shade! While huskies love the sun, they do need a good place to cool off if it is super hot out, especially when they are running and playing hard.

That being said, I asked the pups if they were ready for an adventure aaaaand...

Well as you can see

one of them looks more ready than the other one does...

Truth be told, Kenga was flipping out. This was his "why the hell am I waiting here for a picture I should be running to the car!" face. He uses this "WTF" face a lot... lol.

And then we were off!

The left park on the list was Las Palmas Dog Park in Sunnyvale. We were hoping this one would be good since it was close(ish) to our house and to work. We looked at pics online before leaving, and it looked pretty promising, but when we got there it was... not great...

Lets see how this stacks up:

Good Parking: Well, it's not shown in this pic, but the parking was pretty decent. Las Palmas Park in large (scroll down) and so it has a good amount of parking.
Space: Well, that's the first place this falls short. It looks like it is normally larger (includes the grassy area in the back right past the fence), but about half the area was fenced off, leaving just the dirt portion. We met another husky there and three huskies playing together was already a lot. If we had 5 or more they would be cramped.
Shade: It scored decently well here, but the shade didnt really have any sitting area for us humans, which isnt that nice. Again, it's all dirt...everywhere... blech

All-in-all, we were not very impressed. But while we were here, we went on a nice long walk in the rest of the park, which is MUCH nicer than the dog portion!

After a nice long walk, we were off to stop number 2

Next up was Miyuki Dog Park in South San Jose. The park was pretty nice...

...buuut the parking SUCKED.

Let's see how it stacked up:

Good Parking: FAIL! This is at the end of a huge dead-end street that has NO parking allowed on either side. It then has a huge apartment complex off of it, so no luck there. There is a small neighborhood off another off-shoot street, but the parking sucked there too. Overall, totally not working.
Space: Honestly, not awful, but I would like more. It had a mixture of turf in the middle and dirt around the edges, which was nice.
Shade: Good amount of shade, but again there was the issue of not having any good seating for humans.

Another big downside to this one was that it is RIGHT behind the soundwall of the freeway. So it was pretty loud. That's not great when you're hanging out with friends and chatting while the doggos play. All-in-all, not a good option. NEXT!

Kenga was getting tired and entering zen mode, Nali was still in goofy mode and ready to play!

The next and final destination was Butcher Dog Park, also in South San Jose. I had already put this on the list, but got a tip from my friend Sydney that this might be a good spot. With high(er) hopes than for the others, we set off to see what our last stop had to offer.

And OH BOY! What a relief. It immediately looked promising!

And once we got in, we knew we had found a good spot. Let's see...

Parking: YES! It was in a neighborhood just off a busy street, which means easy access and easy parking.
Space: Yep! While not huge by any standard, more than enough space for a big 'ol husky pack do have zoomies to their hearts content. Turf section, dirt section, excellent!
Shade: Another Yes! And not just shade, shade with seating! Nice benches and tables in and out of the shade so everyone can be just where they like to be.

There was shade, space, and parking, hurray! Also a nice water bowl area, and big dog and little dog sections (which is important to some husky owners). All in all, an excellent find!

Nali

approves of the tables in the shade!

Kenga

also gives his happy-faced approval!