Enter a gift shop in a national park and your senses are overwhelmed with memorabilia for sale that years down the road will, hopefully, remind you of your vacation. What do you look for?
There are hats to collect, T-shirts, and hiking stick medallions. Then, too, there are even scrapbook supplies, puzzles, guidebooks, field journals, coffee cups, and framed photographs by photographers who, most often, are better shooters than we are. Some gift shops offer commemorative wool blankets, jewelry, and beer glasses.
Do any of these items interest you? Do you focus on one aspect of park memorabilia -- hats or the hiking stick medallions, perhaps -- to track your national park visits?
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Comments
Stamps in my NP Passport books.
Lapel pins and NP Passport stamps for sure, and a hiking staff badge if I did enough hiking in the park. A long walk from the parking lot to the VC doesn't count as a hike. :-) My Girlfriend always gets a fridge magnet. One day the door is going to fall off when I open it for a glass of milk.
Usually get a book as a souvenir as a gift and if the park has a handbook available I try to get it though not all parks seem to have them and the handbooks themselves can be out of date. So many of the parks are free so I like to get something to support them.
I do the lapel pins and the stamps for my passport book and of course I 'collect' all the pictures I can. I used to collect books but I have run out of room! I have 3 large bookcases in my house and still don't have room for the books I already have. I haven't yet found a way to display my lapel pins. I don't have a lot of wall space in my house (yay big windows!) Any other lapel pin collectors have ideas?
Passport stamps, baseball caps, tshirts, and KoolKanteen water bottles. I especially love the ones that are rare [like my Kalaupapa shirt].
As non-commercial as I usually am, when I see a park or museum gift shop, I'm a lost fool.
I too collect hat pins which I put on a curtain in RV living room. I also collect Jr. Ranger badges. First stop is the VC to get my Jr Ranger book and I always promise to complete the whole book. I've only been turned down once and was told I was "too old." What a bunch of bunk. I always learn a lot about the park doing these activities.
We also collect hat pins for us and the kids. The kids also try to collect pressed pennies wherever we go. Gotta get the National Park passports stamped as well.
Besides fond memories and lots of pictures, I usually get a book or booklet about the park that is rich on photos. Most of the times this is the first thing I do in a new park, to get an idea how professional photographers show the park and what is there to see. The Traveler's sponsor will like that most of the time it is the "stories behind the scenery" booklet. And I keep all the tickets, stubs and what ever I get at the campgrounds or ranger led hikes.
Oh and I got a big coffee mug at Yosemite in 1990, when I was there for the first time. At first I put it away in the cupboard, but sometimes I made it my standard morning coffee mug and use it for about 15 years now almost daily.
Besides that I got the usual assortment of a few t-shirts and caps, but most of them didn't last long and I rarely buy stuff like that anymore.