Did you know that you can get a passport book and collect stamps at the national parks? There are various options available at americasnationalparks.org and it seems like a neat idea that we might get for Elijah.
That got me thinking about all the national parks that I’ve been to. Thanks to Mom directly helping to create this list and for scanning in lots of old slides and photos that I used as references.
- Shenandoah National Park (1989)
- Gateway Arch National Park (1989)
- Mammoth Cave National Park (1992)
- Badlands National Park (1994)
- Rocky Mountain National Park (1996)
- Gettysburg National Park (1998)
- Acadia National Park (1999)
- Everglades National Park (2003)
- Mount Rainier National Park (Many times starting in 2006)
- Olympic National Park (2009)
- North Cascades National Park (2010)
I’ll also include Indiana Dunes National Park, but I was there long before it became a national park in 2019.
The full list of “national parks” is huge because it includes landmarks, sites, trails, memorials, rivers, gardens, towers, islands, etc. I restricted the above list to anything with an official name that ends in “National Park”, but here are some other places I’ve been that don’t fall into that category:
- Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site/Niagra Falls (1993)
- Mount Rushmore National Memorial (1994)
- Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (1998)
- I visited many different DC sites on two separate trips in 1998. One was with my school and the other was with my family.
- Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument (Many times starting in 2007)
The trips before 2006 were family trips. Those trips started off in a tent and then eventually moved to a pop up camper. The camper felt so fancy because we had a dry place to hang out as a family when it rained and there was a fridge so we could avoid dealing with ice and coolers! (Thanks to Mom for apparently taking both pictures.)
