When Woodrow Wilson decided to create the National Park Service in 1916, I am pretty sure that he was imagining a future human person that would someday be born and would appreciate the ever-living shit out of his creation. He was right, and that person was me.
Over the course of my life, I have developed an intense commitment to a variety of interests and hobbies. And once it happens, once I decide that I love something, no amount of reason or common sense will convince me to, say, act rationally surrounding my area of interest. I am all go, no quit, big nuts Harry Stamper when I decide I like something.
SUCH IS THE CASE WITH THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE.
At present, there are 417 national park service sites. You are probably stunned that there are so many national parks. And really, there are only 58 national parks. You are (for God's sake, I hope you are) familiar with the biggies...Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Grand Canyon, Yosemite. What many people don't realize however is that there are many other designations of sites administered by the NPS. These include things like national monuments, national seashores, national military parks, etc. There are many, many different designations, and if you put them all together, you will find that the NPS oversees 417 total sites. So when I refer to the NPS, it's basically the 58 national parks and all their pals.
This leads me to my current life goal, which may at some point be usurped by an even more ridiculous and unattainable life goal. But the fully irrational wild hair I have developed at present is to visit every single stinking site before I go tats up. (THERE IS A SITE IN GUAM. OMG. GUAM. I WILL NEVER MAKE IT TO GUAM. WILL I EVER MAKE IT TO GUAM? I DON'T KNOW BUT I LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT WORRIED ABOUT GETTING TO GUAM.)
Now, for the purposes of indulging and cultivating the psychosis of weird weird weirdos such as myself, the NPS has created something known as the Passport Book. Much like a normal passport used by normal people to travel around the globe, the Passport Book is intended to record cancellations from each country (or in this case, NPS site) that the holder visits. In my case, I am the proud owner of the Collector's Edition, which rather than simply having a generic section devoted to each region of the United States into which one erratically, haphazardly, and recklessly collects cancellations, actually has a designated spot for each and every NPS site.
And I am going to die trying to get each and every one of those little SOBs.
Now, as deeply as it pains me to admit this, I had actually traveled to many NPS sites throughout my earlier years, without being aware that the Passport Book existed. These random vacation stops pre-dated my active and possibly certifiable obsession. But because I have no stamp to prove my visits, my Passport Book ethics dictate that I must re-visit any site I stopped at prior to obtaining my Passport Book. So let the record reflect that I started my actual vision quest in the spring of 2016.
This blog then will attempt to preserve for posterity my adventures and misadventures in NPS travel. And it will be somewhat dicey here as I work through the backlog of NPS visits I made in 2016 and 2017 from memory. No promises. I may have to make some shit up. (Again, I must reiterate that I am not pretending that any of this is rational.)
But here we are. We are going to travel the United States and its territories, we are gonna stamp that Passport Book, and we are going to write excessively nonsensical commentary for the purposes of amusing ourselves. Thanks Woodrow. You are the best. And I promise to get myself to your house at my earliest possible convenience.
