This is the story of our 50 month streak of collecting National Park Passport Stamps.

While checking out the visitor center in Shenandoah National Park during our daughter Chrissy's first camping trip, we came across a passport stamp book put out by Eastern National. My wife and I had extended leave and we were planning a cross-country tour of the United States in another month with her. We thought that buying the book for her would be a nice memento, and Chrissy could have a record of every National Park Service site that she will ever visit.

When we left our house for our trek across the country on May 12, 1997 we actually forgot the passport book at home and had to turn around. It wasn't at the top of our list of necessities, especially since our Ford Contour was so stuffed with all of our camping gear and enough clothes and food for six weeks!

Our original plans were to visit Chrissy's Aunt Laura in Minneapolis, see Badlands, Wind Cave, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks then visit Chrissy's Great Aunt Judy and Uncle Paul in Pocatello, Idaho. Along the way we would stop at any interesting sites that we came across. Our original philosophy in these early days of stamp hunting was to just get one stamp at each park, even if more were available. Our count would be higher now had we tried to get them all.

Our first detour, strictly to visit a site with a stamp, happened on the day we departed Minneapolis. Looking at a map, we realized that Pipestone National Monument was only a short detour off of our planned route. The quest for stamps had begun! From that point on for awhile everything progressed as planned until we were ready to leave Glacier National Park. While trying to figure our best route to Pocatello, we realized just how close to Washington state we were. We took a 300 mile detour!

Collecting as many stamps as possible had now become the driving force behind any new area of the country that we had yet to explore. We still went to Pocatello, but we went there via Washington, Oregon, California, then Oregon again. While in Pocotello, we introduced the passport book to the first of many people who would soon be collecting their own stamps. Great Uncle Paul received his first stamp while at Craters Of The Moon National Monument in Arco, Idaho.

While in Idaho, we decided to take a southern route home through the rest of the country. In a span of two weeks we went from snow drifts of more than ten feet high at Mt Rainier in Washington to temperatures in Arizona and New Mexico of well over 100 degrees. We were stopping at National Monuments, Memorials, and Historic Sites that we had never even heard of before all in the quest for more stamps. In the span of just 43

days we had been in 25 states and had collected 35 stamps. In six weeks time we put 10,561 miles on our car. Upon returning home, we gave a stamp book to Chrissy's Grandpop with a few stamps already in place since just a year before he had been to a few of the parks that we visited but was unaware of the stamp program. Once he received this passport book with the few stamps in place, he started to collect them just as veraciously as us!

By now we had a bit of a streak going - four consecutive months with at least one stamp in each of those months. Chrissy's Grandpop also started a streak of his own with stamps in consecutive months. Now getting stamps turned into a contest as to who could keep the streak going the longest. Another aspect was to see who could collect the most stamps in total. Weekend trips would soon take on a whole new meaning. Grandpop had a different view of collecting as he would try and get every stamp available at each site that he visited.

About this time, Great Uncle Paul started to send us postcards from National Parks with a cancellation stamp right on the card - boasting that he got a new one. He would write things like, "too bad you didn't get this one while you were out here" or "bet you'll never get this one". From that point on, whenever we would get a new stamp, postcards would be mailed to he and Grandpop.

Maps were studied and books about National Park Service units were bought so that each site within an hour or two drive could be found. We soon were visiting new places that we had never even heard of before! Our passport book was beginning to fill up so we bought a second book and carefully opened the metal bindings and added pages from one to the other so that we would have more room.

Vacations were turning into marathons to see how many stamps could be collected on each trip for not only us, but for Grandpop and Uncle Paul. Each route was carefully mapped out to a particular destination so that we could collect as many new stamps as possible. Family vacations were

being judged on the amount of success that we would have on the number of stamps that were collected. The passport book is divided into geographical sections - so getting two stamps on the same parkway was possible if we collected them in two different geographical sections.

In August of 1998 we collected our 75th cancellation stamp. Up to now we still had more stamps than anyone we knew, but the gap was beginning to be narrowed. Grandpop was getting stamps at a furious rate and was getting close to our count. Our consecutive month streak hit 17 months and his was at 14 months and neither of us was anywhere close to letting the other claim victory.

Chrissy's Grandpop was collecting stamps faster than we were and he was closing the gap fast. In the whole time that we had collected stamps, we had never gotten any in Washington, DC. There are many stamps in DC, so over Thanksgiving weekend in 1998 we spent some time there widening the gap. Over the course of two days we collected 16 stamps (with 13 in just one day!) This marathon trip helped us widen the gap considerably. Our total stamp count after visiting Washington,DC was now at 102 stamps.

Collecting passport stamps in Washington proved to be very easy - all the sites are so close to each other. By getting all of these stamps at once, though, we were hurting our future opportunities of keeping our consecutive month streak going. It did feel good to get such a large amount of postcards into the mail to Grandpop and Uncle Paul boasting of our latest acquisitions. Another event that would soon threaten our streak was the birth of our second child, Tommy. It was getting harder for my wife, Barb, to get around while she was pregnant and we knew that after the new baby arrived it would be even harder for us

all to travel with an infant in tow. Barb didn't come along to The Statue Of Liberty or Ellis Island on March 7, 1999 (Tommy was born less then two weeks later). We immediately bought Tommy his own book and he got his first stamp on April 13, 1999 when he was only three weeks old! This stamp was acquired exactly two years to the day after Chrissy got her first stamp.

Our fears of not being able to travel as much with a baby were unfounded. Even though we now had an infant, we still did as much traveling as ever. In 1999, the year Tommy was born, we stayed in Rhode Island, West Virginia, Shenandoah National Park, Vermont, and Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. We also took several day trips throughout the year, collecting 25 stamps in 1999 (at least one in each month), bringing our grand total to 128.

Towards the end of 1999 my philosophy about collecting multiple stamps from the same park unit changed. Chrissy's and Tommy's Grandpop had been getting multiple stamps whenever they were available so I determined that we better also or else he would soon surpass our total. Grandpop collected his 100th stamp while with us in Washington, DC in December, 1999.

In May, 2000 we were flying to Walt Disney World so all of our weekends were busy and the streak was about to end. Unknown to Barb or Grandpop, I drove to Great Falls, Maryland one weekday to collect a stamp at the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National

Historical Park. For a few weeks they thought that our streak had ended at 37 consecutive months. After closely studying our book, Grandpop realized that he could no longer claim to be the new "Streak Champion".  Then, in August, his book took another setback when we collected ten stamps that month on our driving vacation through Ohio and Michigan. This trip brought our total stamp count to 146.

With the help of some books about National Park Service units, we had tracked down some very out of the way and little heard of sites. Unfortunately we were rapidly running out of places to go that were close to our home in New Jersey. Three hours was getting to be too long for a one-way drive just to get a stamp. By now we had involved some other family and friends in the stamp program so we were no longer only getting postcards from Grandpop and Great Uncle Paul, everyone liked to show off their new acquisitions!

Due to the flu, Grandpop's streak ended in February, 2001. We had outlasted his consecutive months with at least one stamp and we were still going. In March we hit 48 months in a row and I figured that would be a nice number to stop our streak at. Four years in a row! In April we went to Florida again, but this time we drove. Although we only collected three new stamps (partially because we already had most of them near the I-95 corridor through Virginia) our month

total was now at 49 . Now I felt that we should make our streak go to an even 50 months in a row. In May we took one last stamp trek to Washington, DC. We ended our streak on May 19, 2001 with 159 stamps and at least one stamp collected during a month for 50 months in a row.

Although we did not get a stamp in June, 2001, we are still collecting stamps and still trying to keep our total higher than anyone else we personally know.

To see our most recent stamp acquisitions please

To see all of our additional bonus stamps please

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