Informational Interlude: The Nerd Book

I’ve mentioned the book of books in previous posts. Steve and I both feel that it has become an important aspect of our travels about America’s National Parks. We affectionately refer to it as the Nerd Book (its official name is “Passport To Your National Parks - Explorer Edition”) and we feel naked entering a park without it. Seriously, we didn’t have the Nerd Book with us when visiting Pinnacles National Monument and as such, I had to stamp itinerant pieces of paper with those passport cancellations and paste them into the book after our arrival home. Steve told me that he believed those stamps could be considered illegitimate by virtue of the fact that they were not stamped directly into the book and therefore, might also be considered cheating. And you all think I'm the quirky one of this twosome...



At any rate, every National Park, Monument, Recreation Area, Preserve, Reserve, River, Lakeshore, Seashore, Battlefield (the list goes on and on and can be found at the front the book) has a passport cancellation station in their Visitor Center(s). Cancellation Stamps contain the name of the National Park, Visitor Center name or city of residence and a current date. Some parks also have an additional iconic stamp that refers to the geography or wildlife in the park (i.e., Lassen Volcanic National Park has an erupting volcano stamp, Sequoia has a towering tree stamp and Pinnacles has a California condor stamp). So, the object of this self-imposed competition is to visit as many parks as one can feasibly visit, stamp the book (and maybe collect a few official park stickers to adorn the pages as well) and share one’s nerdy stamp collecting stories with one’s friends! Okay, friends may not want to hear any riveting passport cancellation station lore, but nevertheless, the Nerd Book is an excellent memory collection tool!