35+ AMAZING GIFTS FOR NATIONAL PARK LOVERS
Post Summary: A complete list from a fellow National Park fanatic of the best gifts for National Park lovers.
Are you looking for fun and creative gifts for a national park lover? When we hit the road to explore the US with our two-year-old in tow, top on our list was visiting as many national parks as we could. It’s safe to say we are National Park fanatics.
If you have a friend or loved one who absolutely loves the national parks and you’re wondering what to get them for their next birthday or gift-giving holiday, we’ve got you covered.
We’ve compiled a complete list of 35+ fun national park gift ideas and national park collectibles that will satisfy every forest-loving, trail-dwelling national park fan.
Interested in more gift ideas for national park lovers? Check out these posts!
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45 Gift Ideas For Moms Who Love To Hike
21 Fantastic Gifts For Adventure Ready Women
20 Gifts For Outdoorsy Parents (For All Budgets)
*This Gifts for National Park Lovers post may contain affiliate links, which means we might earn a small commission if you purchase from them. This is at no extra cost to you! We only recommend products and services we think are helpful.
TOP 5 NATIONAL PARK GIFTS
Before we dive into the gift ideas, here’s a quick list of our top five gifts for national park lovers.
- Best Luxury Gift: National Parks Pendleton Blanket
- Best National Park Book: 100 Parks, 5000 Ideas
- Most Useful Gift: National Park Water Bottle
- Best Gift For Families: Lantern Press National Parks Puzzle
- Best Gadget Gift: Solar Power Bank
35+ GIFTS FOR NATIONAL PARK LOVERS
HANDMADE WANDERCHAIN AND TOKENS
A travel keychain from The Wander Club is the perfect national park gift for someone who wants a keepsake for all their fun travels. All handcrafted in the US, the token holders are personalized with an engraved token for every national park you’ve visited. You can even have a date engraved onto the token.
The token holders come in a variety of beautiful colors, and you can choose between leather or vegan leather. We ended up getting the brown and forest green colors, and they’re stunning in person. The packaging is also chic, so you can drop it in a pretty bag and it’s gift-ready.
In addition to being a fantastic gift for national park enthusiasts, you can also feel good about where your money is going. For every order placed, they provide a meal to a child in need.
You can click here to see what other fun colors they offer.
*The Wander Club is a small business and a BIPOC-Owned Business.
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL PASS
The national park pass is perfect for anyone who will be doing upcoming travels through the parks. It’s the closest thing you can get to a national park gift card. The pass not only gets you entrance into all the national parks, but it also includes more than 2000 federal recreation sites like national landmarks and national monuments. The pass is valid for one year and covers entrance for a driver and all passengers in a personal vehicle at parks that charge per car or up to 4 adults at parks that charge per person. You can buy and find more information here.
We used it on our trip through the west coast and east coast national parks and it saved us a ton of money!
NATIONAL PARK PASSPORT
Once you become national park obsessed, you’ll become equally obsessed with filling up your national park passport. Just like a government-issued passport, you take your passport book to every new park you visit and get an official stamp from the visitors center. Why do we love these so much…because stamps are cool! It’s a badge of honor and the perfect national park collectible to commemorate your time visiting the parks.
There’s a wide variety of national park passports available, and this one here is the standard one sold in most national park sites. We tend to like the ones sold by individual sellers that are a little more creative with extra room for writing down notes and interesting memories. We like this one for its simple, classy design and this leather-bound journal/passport for its elegant and rustic feel. Both feel a little more high-end and distinguished than the official national park journal sold at the visitor shops.
NATIONAL PARKS GUIDE BOOKS
Anyone looking for gifts for people who love national parks should look no further than a glorious travel book from National Geographic. The Complete National Parks book offers comprehensive information for anyone looking to plan a trip, while 100 Parks, 5000 Ideas offers short summaries with outstanding photos that we’ve all come to expect from National Geographic.
Both are visually appealing books that would make great coffee table books. If you are looking for a book that’s straight photography with limited writing, National Geographic also has the book The National Parks: An Illustrated History.
READ NEXT: 20 Amazing Books About National Parks
NATIONAL PARK MEMOIRS
If you want to do something different than a national park guidebook, getting a memoir is a great alternative. Leave Only Footprints is a well-written travel memoir by Connor Knighton. Fresh from a breakup with his fiance, Knighton goes on a journey to every single national park in America. He offers interesting history and trivia about the parks while weaving in his own personal stories. I loved reading this book and would recommend it to any National Park fan who’s also a book lover.
There’s also Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks, an outstanding travel book from a former park ranger. In it, she details with humor and depth an extraordinary first-hand account of life as a park ranger. Reading this book gave me such respect for the hard and sometimes dangerous work that park rangers do to keep the park safe.
NATIONAL PARK COOKBOOK
Gift your foodie adventurer with a book of recipes from the famed National Parks restaurants. Park cookbook and part travel book, The National Parks Cookbook is an excellent present for someone who also loves to cook. Fun recipes like Braised Bison Short Ribs (inspired by Yellowstone) and Huckleberry Margaritas (inspired by Grand Teton) will satisfy every food-loving explorer.
SUBPARK PARKS
This is a fun national park gift for anyone with a wicked sense of humor. Subpar Parks from Amber Share started as an Instagram account where she would make beautiful artwork from people’s bad reviews of the parks. According to one disgruntled traveler, instead of traveling to Yellowstone, one should “save yourself some money, boil some water at home.” Set against her own artwork, the reviews are hilarious and outright ridiculous. The book also offers stories from park rangers and her own thoughts about the parks.
ROAMING AMERICA: EXPLORING ALL THE NATIONAL PARKS
Roaming America: Exploring all the National Parks is a gift that skews to a younger generation who are attracted to van life and social media-inspired photography. Written by two successful travel influencers, the book follows their seven-month journey to every national park in the US. Dreamy images and photos of their well-decorated bohemian van are sure to inspire a younger generation of national park lovers who would love to do their own cross-country adventures.
NATIONAL PARK THEMED SHIRTS
People who love national parks, also like to let everyone know they like national parks by wearing national park-themed t-shirts. Hey, we’re not judging. We wear those hip graphic tees too! Now, how to decide which shirt to get?
When shopping around for cute shirts, I’ve found that the best national park ones always come from ETSY. You can make custom shirts from this seller or you can browse through their hundreds of different shirt options. It’s perfect if you want a shirt with a specific national park.
Personally, we spent so much time at Yellowstone and the Mighty 5 in Utah, that we LOVE this Zion T-shirt and Yellowstone T-shirt,
NATIONAL PARK HOODIE + SWEATSHIRT
A snug, cozy hoodie or sweatshirt with a stylish graphic design is a great national park-themed gift for the hiker who needs layers for early morning walks. I love the simple aesthetic of this Yosemite and Acadia sweatshirt.
If those aren’t your style, you can also check out the full collection of national park hoodies from Etsy.
NATIONAL PARK BASEBALL HAT
A national park baseball hat is a utilitarian gift that every hiker can use on the trail. We love the hats from Park Vibes, in particular, the corduroy hats that are custom-made for each national park.
If that’s not your style, you can shop for more national park hat options on Etsy.
DARN TOUGH SOCKS
If you like the National Parks, chances are you like to hike. If you liek to hike, you need high quality Merino Wool socks to protect your feet from blisters and to protect your friends from the stench of your sweaty feet. There’s no one that does socks better than Darn Tough.
Shop women’s Darn Tough socks here and men’s Darn Tough Socks here.
NATIONAL PARKS POSTER + PRINTS
Top on our list of national park-themed gifts is a poster or print of the parks. In the late 1930s, President Roosevelt started a program called the Work Projects Administration (WPA) that was created to generate employment during the worst years of the Great Depression. Born out of that initiative was the WPA Poster Collection consisting of 907 posters that publicized community initiatives and programs.
Today, there is a great boom of artists creating national park posters in the style of the old WPA poster collection. Most notable is the artist Rob Decker, famous for studying under Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park. You can see his posters here.
While we love his work, there are a lot of other great works of art inspired by the parks, like this four-piece art print of Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Olympic National Park and the posters from Parks Posters.
NATIONAL PARK WATER BOTTLE
Having a great water bottle is essential to anyone visiting the national parks. We LOVE this collectible national park water bottle that comes with 63 National Park Stickers you add to your bottle after you’ve visited the park. A fun way to inspire someone to visit more parks!
NATIONAL PARK COOLER
A hip-looking cooler to ride along on a road trip adventure is a fantastic gift for the national park goer who is always out on the go. The ECOCOOL Playmate from Igloo is a partnership with the Parks Project where a portion of the profits will go toward the National Parks Conservation Association. The cooler is made with recycled post-consumer resin and Thermecool foam to keep everything ice cold.
NATIONAL PARK STICKERS
Stickers are a great option if you’re looking for a national park gift for a young person or an adult who’s young at heart. You can emblazon these on your water bottle, an iPad, backpack, or put them in your National Parks passport from above. There’s a great variety of stickers available, but we love this classic 100-piece sticker set with an assortment of national parks and these vintage-looking stickers from Anderson Design Group.
NATIONAL PARK PATCH
Gift a fun national park patch that can be put on a hat, backpack, or wherever they please. A fun, simple gift that will appeal to kids who love to collect patches.
NATIONAL PARK ADVENTURE GUIDE
If you love the idea of a passport, guidebook, and stickers all wrapped into one, then the National Park Adventure Guide is the perfect national parks gift. This adventure guide is a travel-sized book with a section for each national park that includes space to take notes, a top ten list of highlights, educational facts, and stickers. This is the ideal national park gift for someone embarking on a road trip to see multiple parks.
NATIONAL PARK CANDLES
If you have a candle lover, then the national park collection from Good & Well Supply Co is the perfect national park-themed gift. We love the aesthetic of the tin can and that each candle is hand-poured in the company’s home base of Washington state. Each scent is “inspired and derived from the wild and pristine lands of America’s National Parks and monuments.” You can view and purchase the candles here.
NATIONAL PARK PENDLETON BLANKET
If you are looking for luxurious national park gifts, you can’t go wrong with a Pendleton blanket from their National Parks collection. Made in their mill in Washington from pure virgin wool, a Pendleton blanket is the coziest, warmest blanket you could get for anyone who will be camping in the parks.
NATIONAL PARKS RUMPL BLANKET
Another blanket at a more affordable price than Pendleton is the National Parks Original Puffy Blanket from Rumpl. Available in a variety of prints from the Anderson Design Group, the blanket is made of recycled bottles and is stain-resistant, water-resistant, and machine-washable. It’s lightweight, packs down small, and for many, it’s the ultimate camping blanket.
*Rumpl is a member of 1% For The Planet, which means they donate one percent of all their revenue to environmental non-profits.
NOMADIX NATIONAL PARKS TOWEL
Made of recycled materials, Nomadix makes incredible towels ideal for travel, camping, yoga, and beach outings. The towels are sand-resistant, odor-resistant, quick dry, super absorbent, lightweight, and pack down small. Nomadix has a line of national park towels that features beautiful designs of several different national parks.
*Nomadix is a member of 1% For The Planet, which means they donate one percent of all their revenue to environmental non-profits.
NATIONAL PARKS BOARD GAME
A national parks board game is a great gift for a family who loves national parks or will be visiting one soon with their little ones. Trekking the National Parks is an award-winning board game that was created with the help of parents who have traveled to every national park. Educational and stimulating, it’s a fun pick if someone is looking to inspire the travel bug in their kids. You could also opt for Trekking the National Parks: The Family Trivia, a trivia game created by the same game makers.
NATIONAL PARKS PORTABLE TRIVIA
Portable trivia that you can take on the road with you is perfect for anyone road-tripping to America’s iconic parks. The perfect game for anyone looking for fun things to do on a road trip. With 600 questions the game will last you for hours.
NATIONAL PARKS PUZZLE
Another fun option in the game category is to gift a national park themed puzzle. Lantern Press has a beautiful 1000-piece puzzle that is perfect for family fun around the diner table. Inspired by WP posters, the puzzle features several popular parks with vivid coloring. A vibrant puzzle that can be framed afterward.
NATIONAL PARK COFFEE MUG
A great coffee mug is something any coffee lover/national park lover can enjoy. We love these personalized leather coffee mugs that are perfect for sipping coffee while lazing at your campsite. You can personalize it with their name or their favorite national park.
HIKING BOOTS
Seeing as hiking is the #1 activity in national parks, a good pair of hiking shoes is a must. The Jag Boot from Danner is an excellent hiking boot that is stylish, waterproof, durable, and trail-ready. Shop here for women’s Jag Boot and here for men’s Jag Boot.
NATIONAL PARKS SCRATCH OFF MAPS
A fun and creative national park gift is a scratch-off travel print of all the national parks. It’s an excellent gift for anyone embarking on a national park road trip or a traveler who you know will attempt to see as many parks as possible. Set up to be a display piece in a home, it also serves as a nice decor piece.
NATIONAL PARKS COLORING BOOK
A coloring book with beautiful images of the national parks is a wonderful gift for anyone who hasn’t explored the serenity of idly coloring in a coloring book. A creative pursuit that’s also stress relieving is perfect for the frazzled person who needs a calming activity. The National Parks Coloring Book from Veronica Hue is ideal for older kids and adults.
NATIONAL PARKS POSTCARD COLORING BOOK
A fun variation on a coloring book is this National Parks Postcard Coloring Book from Earth Aware Editions. Featuring 20 postcards with images of the parks, you can color in the postcard and drop it in the mail to family and loved ones. The postcards are a unique way to capture your travels and commemorate your time. It’s the perfect national park gift for family and kids.
HAMMOCK
The best gifts for national park lovers are something they can use frequently in their outdoor lifestyle. A hammock from Wise Owl fits the bill perfectly. Whether they use it for camping or backpacking the backcountry, a hammock is a unique gift that any outdoorsy person would love to get. It’s also great for families!
KINDLE MEMBERSHIP
One of our favorite national park gift ideas is a membership to Kindle Unlimited. Most national parks are wifi dead zones (and we like it that way) so if you’re camping or lodging in the park, it’s nice to have a book as a source of entertainment. If you really want to double down on your gift, you can even gift them a Kindle along with the subscription. We like Kindle Unlimited because it offers a small pool of audible books as well, which can be nice for long driving days. You can learn more about Kindle Unlimited here.
AUDIBLE MEMBERSHIP
Another choice is to gift a subscription from Audible, a “books on tape” service, rather than a Kindle subscription. This is a great choice for anyone who prefers to listen rather than read books. You can check out the various Audible plans here.
JOHN MUIR THEMED GIFT
John Muir is affectionately known as the “father of the national parks.” If you’re looking for a gift for someone who not only loves national parks but also has a deep affinity for nature then anything inspired by John Muir is sure to be a hit. Our National Parks and Wilderness Essays are two fantastic books from John Muir.
You can also get this beautiful mountain necklace with his most famous quote inscribed on the card.
Related Post: Read more John Muir quotes in or 40 Adventurous Family Travel Quotes post.
THE LOST ART OF READING NATURE’S SIGNS
The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs is one of many books by the extraordinary Tristan Gooley. In this fantastic book, he shares 850 tips for understanding signs from weather, scents, tree directions, flower formations, and more. It’s the ultimate book for the person who yearns to feel skilled while navigating the outdoors.
SOLAR CHARGER POWER BANK
Being able to have a charger that doesn’t need to be plugged into anything is GOLD. This is the ultimate national park gift for someone who is also a gear lover. Having a solar-powered charger can be all the difference when your phone is dying because you’ve been taking jaw-dropping photos all day of the mountains. This solar power bank has two USB ports and can charge an iPhone two times. It also includes a flashlight, perfect for when you’re doing an early evening hike.
LEATHERMAN MULTI TOOL
For anyone who spends a lot of time camping or hiking through the backcountry, a leatherman will always be a prime gift idea. The Signal Camping Leatherman is designed specifically for camping and outdoor lovers. Equipped with all the typical leatherman tools (hammer, pliers, wire cutters, knife, saw) it also comes with a firestarter, safety whistle, and a bottle opener.
NATIONAL PARKS DONATION GIFT
Lastly, if none of the above gifts strike a chord, consider the best national parks gift idea of them all – a donation in the gift recipient’s name. Anyone who loves the parks would want to contribute to helping these incredible American landmarks survive and thrive. The National Parks Foundation is the official charitable partner of the National Park Service. You can donate and read about their work here.
Did you find the perfect gift? We hope you were inspired by our list of the best gifts for national park lovers.
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