Kevin and I have been collecting cancellation stamps for the national parks since spring break of 2000 (March 13^th, to be exact). That was the day I decided against the magnets, shot glasses and spoons sold at the gift shop under the Gateway Arch and decided to buy my first Passport book. No matter where we go, when we get to a historical place, we take pictures for the kids in my class that year, but my favorite ones are part of a series that someday senators at some official hearing will be calling the "Mr. Burke Defiles History" files.

It all began simply enough...all the kids in every class I've ever had adore my husband, so they love to see pictures of him being silly. Plus, I have this problem with some of the park statues. I LOVE those lifelike ones...but they TOTALLY creep me out, so I'm never brave enough to stand near one. So, some of our pics are just of Kevin interacting with the statues, not really doing anything harmful, while others...well, let's just take a look, shall we?

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (March 13, 2000)

This was our first trip, so we didn't really take any silly pics. We were up visiting my uncle in my adopted hometown of St. Louis when I first saw the Passport to Your National Parks book. The pic below is actually up on the observation deck overlooking the Mississippi River, the Illinois side (East St. Louis) and the whole downtown St. Louis area.

Here's a great shot of the Gateway Arch from the ground with Kevin and also from above. The actual museum is underground between the Arch's legs. The coolest part is you go up in these little eggs with about 5 other people to the top (not the best plan for those of you who're more claustrophobic or more accident prone than I...I cracked my head 3 times on the curve wall behind me when I misjudged and leaned back!).

The shot really shows you how big these legs actually ARE...and this is only one SIDE! The legs are basically triangular, so you've got three sides a lot like this one.

 San Antonio Missions NHP & The Alamo (April 22, 2000)

After I got the "park bug", we started planning Spring Break around places that had national parks and roller coasters (not always in that order, but pretty close!). San Antonio has Fiesta Texas and the Missions Trail, so this worked out great! Again, this was a little before we decided to get goofy with our national history, so your standard "The Two of Us At (insert place here" pic is on the right.

There's about 5 missions to visit, not including the Alamo (which was also a mission) and some of them are still used for church services! To the left is a pic of me in the outer hall of Mission Concepcion, where the stamp location is.

Lyndon B. Johnson NHP (April 23, 2000)

We lived in Dallas back in 2000, so on our way home, we decided to stop off in Johnson City for the Lyndon B. Johnson NHP. I decided taking shots of the signs for each park might help when I put them into albums, so here's our first park sign (don't remember if the museum under the Arch even HAD one!).

This picture is one of the first where we decided we might have a little fun with history. Somewhere on the land where the Johnson ranch and boyhood home was, we saw this outhouse outside and...well...

It is important to note that no historical outhouses were ACTUALLY harmed or defiled in the making of this picture. This is a simulated dump...had this been an actual dump, you would have been highly offended and we'dve been arrested! ;-)

Seriously, this seemed like a hilarious idea at the time...!