Garland Frankfurth is a 79 year-old man who is a travel enthusiast, and has visited over 400 national parks over decades worth of exploration.
According to the Spokeman, Frankfurth has garnered 425 unique stamps from different national park sites over the years. The unique process of Frankfurth's stamp collecting started decades ago. While at a store in Yellowstone National Park, Frankfurth noticed a booklet for sale. On the front of the booklet read "Passport to your National Parks." Inside the booklet, were empty pages, awaiting stamps from different sites.
At the time of his first seeing the passport, Frankfurth was actually in the middle of a 21,000-mile long trip around the perimeter of the United States. The explorer's journey was set to take five months, and he pulled a 30-foot camper the entire way. During that trip, Frankruth hoped to fill one of the passports with ten or so stamps.
Fast forward many years and trips, and Frankfurth has filled three of the passports up.
Washington Man Has Visited 425 National Park Sites Over Decades Of Travel
Frankfurth was born in South Dakota, originally. In high school, the traveler moved to Spokane, Washington. Eventually, after college, Frankfurth became a U.S. history teacher in Sequim, Washington. He taught there for 30 years. Being a history teacher, Frankfurth has always enjoyed visitng places with history baked into them. His favorite state is reportedly Virginia, because of the history it holds.
Frankfurth is also quite fond of the Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida. Very recently, the explorer spent this summer in Alaska. After 17 flights, Frankfurth had visited Kobuk Valley National Park, Katmai National Park, and a World War 2 site on the Alleutian Islands. Of course, Frankfurth collected stamps at each location.
Notably, the total number of available stamps sits at 431. At 425 stamps, Frankfurth is exceptionally close to becoming one of very few to ever collect all the available stamps. Interestingly though, Frankfurth is not sure such a feat is one he wants to chase. Currently, the explorer is just looking to answer a question most have on their minds at some point: "what's next?"
