Passports Without The Porno Scanner

Spanish hiking passport.

A lot of people have a passport, I have one but did you know there are other kinds of passports that are fun and you don’t have to send in a birth certificate or go through a TSA porno scanner at the airport. The two fun passports I am going to talk are the one I have.

First, passports like these are nothing new they have an old tradition. For hundreds of years hikers of the Camino de Santiago in Spain acquired a “passport” to document their journey. They would get them stamped at places, mostly hostels, on their way. Anyway, I will start with the first one we (Deb & I) got and that is the National Parks Passport.  With this passport one can get stamps at any of the many U.S. National Parks or Historic places. We bought this one last summer on the Blue Ridge Parkway. They can be purchased at many national parks and from this site.

National Parks Passport

Some of the stamps.

The second of these is one that came out around Christmas (2013) and in plenty of time before the 2014 Thru-Hiking season, the Appalachian Trail (AT) Passport. This little green passport is much smaller than the National Park one.  Like those old Spanish ones the stamps for the AT Passport can be obtained at participating hostels, and other places that have stamps. I got mine at Christmas.

AT Passport: Front...

...back.

My four stamps to date.

So, far I have four stamps on mine. The first two I received back in late February one from Mountain Crossing Outfitters (which has a hostel) in Neel Gap and the Hiker Hostel near Dahlonega. The third was from the Amicalola Falls Visitors Center in early May. The final one, so far, I got last week at the Top of Georgia Hostel and Hiking Center in Hiawassee. On the AT Passport website one can find a list of stamp locations. You can also purchase the passport on their website and some places that have stamps also sell the passports.

These passports are fun and there are no strip searches involved.