What is the America the Beautiful Pass?
The America the Beautiful Pass is an annual pass to almost all federal sites that charge an admission fee in the United States. This includes the National Parks and many of our national monuments. It does not always cover tours or parking, or sites on Indian reservations, but it can be a great deal if you are planning on visiting multiple national parks or other sites in a single year. You can purchase it upon your arrival at almost any of the federal lands, or go ahead and purchase an America the Beautiful Pass online here. With individual National Parks costing $25 or more in many cases, an annual pass for less than $100 can be a great deal! There are even deals for seniors along with free passes for military members and fourth graders as part of the Kid in Every Park initiative. When I was buying the pass, however, it was difficult to find a good list of locations outside of the National Parks where we could potentially use it. Cue Passport to Your National Parks.
Passport to Your National Parks
While Mike and I were in Biscayne National Park, we stumbled across the book Passport to Your National Parks in the gift shop, which provides a list of many of the federally protected locations in the United States. A map of all the locations mentioned in the book is below for you to explore options and potentially plan some trips around! Whether you are going to be driving through an area and looking for some cool stops along the way, or the purpose of your trip is to use your pass and get some stamps in your passport is up to you!
The awesome thing about this book is that it leaves locations for “cancelations”, a fancy way of staying stamps for each of the locations you’ve visited, the same way you would get a passport stamped upon arrival. When you check out a visitor center there is typically a location with stamps for you to start marking off the places as you visit them. It also provides a small blurb about the location and a location for stickers related to that site. A handful of stickers have been published every year since the project started in 1987, so while not all of the locations will have stickers yet, it’s another fun way to learn more about the locations before you visit them. If you do happen to buy the book, you can find all the stickers available for purchase here.
