Our National Parks are absolute treasures. From the tall peaks in Glacier National Park, to flowing lava in Hawaii Volcanoes to the underwater shipwrecks in Biscayne each one is unique. Many of my favorite memories during our travels involve one of the sites run by the National Park Service. According to the National Park Foundation website there are 417 sites which “span across more than 84 million acres” and “extend into territories including parks in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam.”

To make visiting the parks more cost effective we buy an “America the Beautiful – National Parks & Federal Recreation Annual Pass” every year. Kind of a mouthful huh? We mostly just call it the “National Parks Pass” because its sooo much easier to say!

What’s super cool is that the National Park Foundation holds an annual contest every year to determine the photo that graces the front of the pass. The Share the Experience photo contest is not open to professional photographers (you have to make less than 20% of your income from photography – yep I totally qualify) so there are normal human beings that submit thousands of photos every year.

In addition to the Grand Prize winner, there’s also a 2nd, & 3rd place as well as category winners for all 7 categories.

I submitted this photo last December and recently found out it is the Family, Friends, and Fun category winner! I’m so stoked!

Its such an honor to be chosen out of so many submissions! You can submit up to 10 photos per month and the foundation chooses monthly winners throughout the year and judges the overall winners the following January. I can’t imagine the criteria they have to use to pick winners – it must be overwhelming sometimes!

Just for fun I thought I’d include some of my other favorite photos from National Park sites around the country:

Backpacking on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

Eating ice cream at Mt. Rushmore

Coolest rock formations at Chiricahua National Monument, AZ

Camping at Valley of the Gods

Exploring the ruins on Cumberland Island National Seashore

Lava! Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Overnight river trip in Big Bend National Park

Celebrating his 8th birthday on the Apostle Islands

I love even just looking through the website to see all the amazing places people have been. It’s truly inspiring! If you’ve been to a national park site recently or plan to this year for sure think about submitting your photos to the contest. Who knows? You could end up winning the Grand Prize. 🙂