Kenn and I travel primarily to see parts of the country we haven’t seen before. While we’re seeing the sights, we also make it a point to visit any national parks, national monuments, etc. along our route. A few years ago I discovered the existence of National Parks Passports and gifted Kenn one. The “passport” is just a fun way to document the parks that you’ve visited. The book is broken out by area of the country and within each section each page gives spaces for the official cancellation and a regional stamp (decal) for the location.
Each park has “cancellation” stamps for the location. The stamp includes the date, name of the park, and the location (state, town). The stamps are usually located at the visitor’s center, but not always. At the Flight 93 memorial in Pennsylvania, the stamps were located at the memorial plaza instead of the visitor’s center. While the stamps are free, the decals (or regional stamps) are not. There are usually a variety of these decals to choose from and they are less than five dollars.
There are also a couple of handy accessories for the passport books. The first is stampable sticker sets. Each of the stampable stickers is round and just the right size for a cancellation stamp. These stickers come in handy if you forget your passport; you can just stamp the sticker, then place the sticker in your book later. As I’ve learned, they also come in handy when the cancellation stamp is incomplete or illegible as sometimes happens when there is too little (or too much) ink on the stamp. In those instances, I just stamp one of the stickers and place it over the original stamp. Problem solved.
The second helpful accessory is the expander pack which provides extra pages that can be added to the passport book. When we took our trip out west in 2023 we quickly filled up the section for that area, so it was nice to be able to add a couple of pages. Of course, the passport book is rather small so there are only so many pages that can be added. I’m not sure what we’ll do when we can no longer add pages. Maybe we’ll just pick up a second passport.
As one of the perks to turning 62 last year, Kenn gifted me with a Lifetime America the Beautiful pass. Now, rather than needing an annual pass to the national parks, we’re good for life! There are some national monuments, etc. that don’t accept any of the parks passes (I’m looking at you Mt. Rushmore), but they are few and far between. If you plan to visit several parks, monuments, etc. in the course of a year, an annual pass is your best bet. At only a few dollars more for a lifetime pass, it is definitely a steal once you hit the right age.
Now, we have an excuse to go back to the parks we visited before getting a passport to collect the stamps from those. I don’t consider that a hardship, LOL. Any other national park “collectors” out there?šāāļø
Linda Lou's Life 
We do not use the Passport book. However, since we volunteer in National Park sites, we see a lot of people who use the Passports. Lots and lots! Whoever thought this up made a lot of money for NPS! The most interesting Passport book I saw was a woman who instead of purchasing the stamps, would watercolor paint her own little picture in the box. It was beautiful! We’ve also seen folks who come in for the stamp and leave. Without bothering to explore. Their loss! But most want to learn at least something about where they are. I hope you fill up your book and beyond!
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It’s interesting talking to others who are stamping their books. We encountered one woman who said that she and her husband had been trying to collect all of the parks. He had passed away a year or so earlier, so she was getting the last few on her own.
The tiny watercolor paintings sound wonderful! Thanks for stopping by!
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Dammit, Mount Rushmore!
I love the passport book. When I retire, that’s something I’d consider doing.
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It would take a lot to make me go back to Mount Rushmore.
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We did Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island in Hawaii. Kilauea wasn’t erupting very much, but they had a whole list of activities that Baby D could do to win a special badge. Also, they told us to please run over any mongoose we saw, as they are invasive and a threat to birds.
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LOL!
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Yes, we have the same passport book! I wonder how many of the same stamps we have?
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It would be interesting to compare.
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That’s great about the passport book. I didn’t know about that until a few years ago when I took a lighthouse tour of a historical lighthouse in Michigan that opens up for tours one day a year. It was local for me, but there were two busloads of people visiting that day and they were all part of a lighthouse viewing club. The people were all very nice and eager to show me their Lighthouse Passport books. I didn’t know these existed and wrote a post about it and learned about the National Park Pass that way.
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I didn’t know about the Lighthouse Passport book. How interesting!
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I had no idea about the Lighthouse Passport, nor the group before I did the lighthouse tour that day. All these people take tours to visit lighthouses nationally and even internationally. From Michigan they were going to Canada and ending up in Niagara Falls and it was a week-long bus trip.
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