Portsmouth, VA
August 31, 2007
-FrankieT
Well, maybe we should start with a little background information. It all started for me with a seemingly innocuous visit in October 2005 to Fort Frederica, an unremarkable NPS unit on St. Simon's Island in Georgia. I was visiting my sister and her family in St. Mary's, a town about 30 miles south of St Simon's and we were looking for a day trip that didn't involve Jacksonville. A brief deliberation ensued and we made the decision to drive to St. Simon's, not even knowing that a national park site existed there. After touring the local lighthouse and combing the beach for about an hour, we stumbled upon a sign for Fort Frederica National Monument. With little else to do, we made our way to the visitor center and, while the rest of the crew used the facilities, I started to make my way around the exhibits.
Now, I had been to several national park sites prior to this one and even made it a point to stop whenever possible in the event that I saw the telltale brown sign on the highway. However, let me make it clear that I had never made an organized effort to visit national park sites in my travels and, honestly, didn't even know what sites were affiliated with the National Park Service (for example, I did not know that the Washington Monument was a National Park site). As I made my way around this visitor center, nothing would suggest that my haphazard method of incidentally visiting National Park sites was about to change.
The exhibits in the center were informative and the story moderately interesting (the British and Spanish clashed here during the colonial days of Georgia's existence) but there was nothing remarkable about the site and certainly nothing that would spark a lifelong quest to visit all 391 National Park units. However, as I was making my way to the door, I stopped to ask the ranger on duty about touring the fort outside. In the process of getting this information, I noticed a small display on the counter advertising the Passport to Your National Parks. I proceeded to flip through the small sample book and examined the adjacent stamper, stopping to make an impression on a scrap piece of paper. I thought to myself that this was interesting and made a mental note to look this up on the internet when I got back to my sister's house. I had not yet purchased a Passport book nor had I even collected my first stamp, but I consider this to be the beginning of my quest to visit all 391 (and counting) National Park units.
For those of you that don't know about the National Park system, my subsequent research back at my sister's house revealed several things. At the time, there were 388 sites in the National Park system that were considered 'units' for the purposes of management and visitation (there are now 391). Each of these units (with a few exceptions) participates in the Passport to Your National Parks program in which they are assigned a unique stamp (and sometimes several site-specific stamps) that one can collect in their proprietary Passport book (or medium of your choice). These units preserve, protect and interpret the natural (my favorite), historical and cultural resources of all aspects of our country.
Now I realize that collecting impressions of stamps may seem boring and tedious and, in all honesty, this sometimes is the case. However, the framework that these stamps provide in which to visit some amazing places is the real reward. In the pursuit of collecting and, more importantly, earning these stamps, I have accumulated some incredible experiences and some pleasant surprises. The stamps act as a sort of philatelic travel agent for experiencing the United States and its territories while also providing an indelible record of these visitations.
In my quest to visit all 391 NPU's and collect their associated stamp impressions, I have unofficially anointed myself as a missionary for this program. My first convert was fellow blogger George Boneillo. He was an easy sell as he had just returned from Grand Canyon National Park and had actually visited more National Park sites than I had. As in my case, he shared an appreciation for the National Park system but also had previously lacked the framework from which to launch this interest. Of course, this noble pursuit soon devolved into a latent competition that persists to this day. More recent to the pursuit is blog creator Stefan Heinemann, also an aficionado of the National Park Service but less convinced about the Passport program (at least until recently). After intense peer pressure and several National Park trips in which he stamped random pieces of paper, Stefan finally succumbed and purchased a book of his own. That is where we stand now and the quest is just beginning.
31 August 2007
First post
2007-AUG-31
Rockville, MD
This first post is just to get things started.
I have invited GB and FT to join and they should be able to post soon. I would like to collect the stories of our travels here, and some pics too. We should be able to post stories and pics pretty easily, but I am new to this whole scene, so we will have to work out the bugs together.
I would like to go back in time with these posts too, but I will need some help from better memories. The New York Trip, New Mexico, etc... I think we can assign dates by clicking on the "post options" at the bottom of the posting field.
Also, for the rest of the 427 crew... and any significant others or friends... PLEASE feel free to weigh in by commenting on posts. It will be the only way to keep our imaginations in check.
Here's to hoping this works out,
Stefan
----------------
Now playing: Kanye West - Stronger
via FoxyTunes
12 August 2007
Great Falls, Clara Barton and the Potomac Heritage NST
12-AUG-2007
Washington, D.C. and Vicinity
Wow, so many rules for posting that I can see why George refuses to join. What about language? I heard mention of friends and family so I assume that some sanitation is necessary? Anyhow, I am getting off track here; my mind tends to wander in my advanced age.
After moving Stefan's thousand tiny boxes of random stuff (Kelly, all of your stuff was really nice and light as feathers:) up three flights of stairs in the dog days of August on the previous day, we approached this NPU excursion with some trepidation. Contrary to our usual 8 am sharp itineraries, we did not actually set foot in a National Park site until noonish (Stefan made damned sure that nothing was going to go wrong with that rental truck return process). Also, we banned hiking from the list of activities and agreed to proceed at a leisurely pace.
I found it appropriate that our first stop was Clara Barton NHS because I am pretty certain that Stefan's moving day qualified as a natural disaster (okay, it really wasn't that bad but it seemed that way at the time). We arrived at Clara's doorstep in the middle of the 11 am tour so we decided to detour across the parking lot to another NPS site, Glen Echo Park. This has to be the only National Park unit dedicated to protecting a former amusement park. We tracked down the stamps using the pedestrian mode of our GPS (an impressive feat, I must say) and rushed back for the 12 pm tour at Clara Barton.
When we returned to Clara Barton, our tour was slightly delayed as the ranger went to her car and fed her kids lunch or something like that. When she returned, she proceeded to tell us everything that was ever known about Clara Barton in exhausting detail. As usual with our tours of obscure historic sites, our tour group consisted of us and one or more elderly persons. The token elderly person in this group played the part as usual (i.e.-asked a bunch of questions; eyed the three of us suspiciously) until her cell phone (yes, elderly people apparently have cell phones) went off with a deafening ringtone (yes, elderly people apparently download ringtones) and she proceeded to answer it in the middle of the ranger's tour. The Clara Barton House, in addition to being historically significant as a headquarters of the Red Cross, was also very interesting in architectural terms because of its dual functionality as a residence and supply warehouse. At the end of the tour, we were treated to a list of stamps for the DC area published by Dandy Dan the Ranger Man, as close as there is to a celebrity in stamping circles.
From here, it was off to Great Falls Park. On the Maryland side of the Potomac, we took a short trail along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (part of the C & O Canal NHP) to a falls overlook. Along the way, we witnessed a dog taking the most massive and foulest defecation ever recorded for Canis domesticus. At the falls, Stefan fell for my falling-rail trick (to explain, the rails were less than secure considering that they were separating us from raging rapids that had claimed over 100 lives in recent years). George was too overcome by his fetish for running water photography to even notice the decrepit rails. After hiking through some sort of rare plant community only found on islands in the Potomac, we came to the overlook to the Virginia side. For some reason, Stefan was all geeked up about the number of great blue herons around the falls which is odd considering that I am supposed to be the avi-phile of the group.
Our attempt to collect 15+ stamps at the George Washington Memorial Parkway (another unit we 'visited' on this trip) headquarters at Turkey Run was unfruitful as it was closed on weekends. Undaunted, we drove up the Potomac to the Virginia side of Great Falls Park. This began our foray into the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail (to be continued...). We enjoyed the superior view of the falls from the overlook on this side of the Potomac and proceeded on to Riverbend Park, the site of our second Potomac Heritage stamp. It is here that Stefan revealed his man-crush on blue-necked woodpeckers (aka, belted kingfishers), yet another reason for me to suspect that he is a closet bird-lover. Although this account may be disputed by other parties privy to inside information, I will insist that I politely and persistently insisted that a stamp existed at this site until the clerk agreed to search for one. Lo and behold, he produced a stamper, still in the box and uninked. We broke it in and headed off for Harper's Ferry.
Harper's Ferry was our Waterloo on this trip. Slowed by a stop at the world's most expensive Arby's (where a Coke is $3 but they only fill it half full) and a boneheaded GPS screwup by me, we arrived at Harper's Ferry just past the 5pm closing time. Despite the fact that we were unable to acquire any stamps, we walked around the town and along the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers in an effort to begin earning the stamp for our return visit.
Washington, D.C. and Vicinity
Wow, so many rules for posting that I can see why George refuses to join. What about language? I heard mention of friends and family so I assume that some sanitation is necessary? Anyhow, I am getting off track here; my mind tends to wander in my advanced age.
After moving Stefan's thousand tiny boxes of random stuff (Kelly, all of your stuff was really nice and light as feathers:) up three flights of stairs in the dog days of August on the previous day, we approached this NPU excursion with some trepidation. Contrary to our usual 8 am sharp itineraries, we did not actually set foot in a National Park site until noonish (Stefan made damned sure that nothing was going to go wrong with that rental truck return process). Also, we banned hiking from the list of activities and agreed to proceed at a leisurely pace.
I found it appropriate that our first stop was Clara Barton NHS because I am pretty certain that Stefan's moving day qualified as a natural disaster (okay, it really wasn't that bad but it seemed that way at the time). We arrived at Clara's doorstep in the middle of the 11 am tour so we decided to detour across the parking lot to another NPS site, Glen Echo Park. This has to be the only National Park unit dedicated to protecting a former amusement park. We tracked down the stamps using the pedestrian mode of our GPS (an impressive feat, I must say) and rushed back for the 12 pm tour at Clara Barton.
When we returned to Clara Barton, our tour was slightly delayed as the ranger went to her car and fed her kids lunch or something like that. When she returned, she proceeded to tell us everything that was ever known about Clara Barton in exhausting detail. As usual with our tours of obscure historic sites, our tour group consisted of us and one or more elderly persons. The token elderly person in this group played the part as usual (i.e.-asked a bunch of questions; eyed the three of us suspiciously) until her cell phone (yes, elderly people apparently have cell phones) went off with a deafening ringtone (yes, elderly people apparently download ringtones) and she proceeded to answer it in the middle of the ranger's tour. The Clara Barton House, in addition to being historically significant as a headquarters of the Red Cross, was also very interesting in architectural terms because of its dual functionality as a residence and supply warehouse. At the end of the tour, we were treated to a list of stamps for the DC area published by Dandy Dan the Ranger Man, as close as there is to a celebrity in stamping circles.
From here, it was off to Great Falls Park. On the Maryland side of the Potomac, we took a short trail along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (part of the C & O Canal NHP) to a falls overlook. Along the way, we witnessed a dog taking the most massive and foulest defecation ever recorded for Canis domesticus. At the falls, Stefan fell for my falling-rail trick (to explain, the rails were less than secure considering that they were separating us from raging rapids that had claimed over 100 lives in recent years). George was too overcome by his fetish for running water photography to even notice the decrepit rails. After hiking through some sort of rare plant community only found on islands in the Potomac, we came to the overlook to the Virginia side. For some reason, Stefan was all geeked up about the number of great blue herons around the falls which is odd considering that I am supposed to be the avi-phile of the group.
Our attempt to collect 15+ stamps at the George Washington Memorial Parkway (another unit we 'visited' on this trip) headquarters at Turkey Run was unfruitful as it was closed on weekends. Undaunted, we drove up the Potomac to the Virginia side of Great Falls Park. This began our foray into the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail (to be continued...). We enjoyed the superior view of the falls from the overlook on this side of the Potomac and proceeded on to Riverbend Park, the site of our second Potomac Heritage stamp. It is here that Stefan revealed his man-crush on blue-necked woodpeckers (aka, belted kingfishers), yet another reason for me to suspect that he is a closet bird-lover. Although this account may be disputed by other parties privy to inside information, I will insist that I politely and persistently insisted that a stamp existed at this site until the clerk agreed to search for one. Lo and behold, he produced a stamper, still in the box and uninked. We broke it in and headed off for Harper's Ferry.
Harper's Ferry was our Waterloo on this trip. Slowed by a stop at the world's most expensive Arby's (where a Coke is $3 but they only fill it half full) and a boneheaded GPS screwup by me, we arrived at Harper's Ferry just past the 5pm closing time. Despite the fact that we were unable to acquire any stamps, we walked around the town and along the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers in an effort to begin earning the stamp for our return visit.
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