At nearly all of the 398 American National Park units (and many of the National Park Service's affiliated areas), one or more National Park Passport Stamps (cancellation stamps) can be acquired at no cost at park visitor centers and ranger stations. The stamps are similar in nature to passport stamps stamped in a traveler's national passport. The stamps serve as a record of each park visit. The Passport to Your National Parks program is run by Eastern National, a non-profit organization. The program began in the middle of 1986. Collectors of the stamps have formed a non-profit social club, the National Park Travelers Club, a group which holds annual conventions. The 2012 convention will be held at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
Read more about National Park Passport Stamps: Passport Books, National Park Passport Regions, Passport To Your National Parks Annual Stamp Series
Famous quotes containing the words national, park, passport and/or stamps:
“America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“Is a park any better than a coal mine? What’s a mountain got that a slag pile hasn’t? What would you rather have in your garden—an almond tree or an oil well?”
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
—John Mauceri (b. 1945)
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)