Here’s a riddle for you: I have two passports, but I do not have dual citizenship, and I’m not a secret agent.
Can you figure it out? Give up?
Well, one of my passports gets me in and out of the country, while my other passport is for the national parks!
Our national parks are an absolute treasure. They preserve an incredible diversity of landscapes, ecosystems, and history; I’m continually amazed by the uniqueness of the parks I visit. Currently there are 63 national parks, but they continue to add new ones to the list over time. Like in December 2020, when West Virginia’s New River Gorge was upgraded from “national river” to “national park.” So far I’ve been to 21 of the parks, which means I still have a pleasantly long way to go to reach my goal of someday visiting all of them.
In addition to the photos, t-shirts, and coffee mugs I’ve accumulated as souvenirs of my parks adventures, I also have a collection of “passport” stamps. The National Park Service created a passport book that visitors can use to document their travels.
It divides the country into nine geographical regions; each section of the book features a map and list of the national sites within that region, a bit of background information on the region, and a set of blank pages to use for stickers and cancellation stamps.
Getting your passport stamped is such a fun way to anchor and commemorate a visit to a new park.
So how’s it work? Every park has a station, typically in the visitor’s center, housing an inkpad and a cancellation stamp featuring the location and current date. Sometimes there is a bonus stamp, maybe a black bear if you are in the Great Smoky Mountains . . .
. . . or a bathhouse if you are visiting Hot Springs.
Turn to the correct section of your book, stamp the page, and voilà. (And if you ever forget to bring your book with you, just stamp on a loose scrap of paper and add it to your book later.)
It is not only at national parks, though, where you can stamp your passport. There are more than 400 areas managed by the National Park Service, from national historical sites and battlefields, to national monuments and memorials, to national forests and lakeshores. . . . If it has the word “National” in front of it, there is a passport stamp to be had.
And sometimes, you have to be tenacious and creative if you want your cancellation stamp.
In June 2021, I visited Yosemite National Park with my husband, sister, and niece. Yosemite is huge and has several distinct regions within it, featuring giant sequoias, tumbling waterfalls, pristine alpine lakes. Not to mention the iconic edifices of El Capitán and Half Dome, of course.
There are three visitor’s centers—at Wawona, Yosemite Valley, and Tuolumne Meadows—and each has its own cancellation stamp. Obviously, we wanted to stamp our passports at all of them. The trouble came when we drove out to Tuolumne Meadows. (By the way, it is pronounced “too-ALL-uh-me.” I had to google that.) It is a long drive to the meadows from Yosemite Valley, but it is breathtaking. Meandering creeks, granite domes, asters and sedge and pines. During summer 2021 the pandemic was still going strong, and that meant that throughout Yosemite, some park amenities remained closed. We hiked around and explored Tuolumne, but when it came time to stop by the visitor’s center before our drive back, it was closed, and there was no sign of an outdoor stamping station.
Not cool. We had driven through the park for TWO HOURS, yes to explore the beautiful sub-alpine lakes and meadows, but also . . . to get a stamp. As we trolled around looking for a makeshift stamping station, we spotted a park ranger. We flagged him down and asked, with the merest hint of desperation, if he knew where to find the passport stamp. He did not. But when my sister asked him if HE would draw a stamp in our passport books for us, he didn’t hesitate. He whipped out a pen and cheerfully obliged. It is easily my favorite stamp so far.
The passport books are a bit of a rabbit hole. There are sheets of stickers you can purchase, a different collection each year, which highlight various sites in each of the geographical regions. These are neat, but I wish I could purchase the regional stickers a-la-carte, because I wind up with a lot of stickers I don’t need. These days I mostly just stick with the cancellation stamps.
I already had my work cut out for me with the national parks passport book. But then for Christmas, my sister got me a passport book for Ohio’s 75 state parks. I didn’t know such a thing existed!
This passport book includes a set of stickers that you can use to document each park as you visit it, in case you are not able to find the official stamp while you are there. Alum Creek is the park closest to where I live and where I earned my first official stamp.
So I guess that means I have not just two, but three, passports. I’d better pack my bags—I’ve got some traveling to do!
Don't Fleece the Bees 