Best National Park Gifts for the Outdoor Lover in Your Life

Every year around the holidays, someone in my family asks the same question: what do you get the person who would rather be outside?

I have a lot of thoughts on this, because I married one of those people and turned into one myself. We spend our weekends chasing national parks — hiking until our legs give out, setting up camp, staying up too late by the fire. So when it comes to gifts, I've learned that the outdoorsy people in your life usually don't want more stuff. They want things that remind them of the places they love.

Here's what I'd actually put on that list. Some of it's ours, some of it isn't.

Something that names their park

There's a specific kind of joy in wearing the exact place that got under your skin. My husband still talks about the first time we drove into Zion, how the walls just kept getting taller. If your person has a park like that — the one they won't stop bringing up — a piece that names it is hard to beat.

That's the whole reason I started drawing our embroidered national park crewnecks. Each one has a single park stitched onto it, and I make them to order, so it feels less like merch and more like a small tribute. The Zion and Grand Canyon ones are the ones I reach for most, but honestly it depends on the person.

A sticker collection they can actually build

Not everyone wants to wear their love for the outdoors, and that's fair. Stickers are the low-commitment version — the thing that ends up on a water bottle, a laptop, the back of a truck window.

I designed our national park stamp stickers to look like little passport stamps, one for each park, because I liked the idea of collecting them the way you'd collect the real cancellation stamps at a visitor center. They're waterproof (I've accidentally run mine through the dishwasher, and it survived), and at a few dollars each they make a great stocking stuffer or a "just because" gift. If you're not sure which park, our full sticker collection has a bit of everything.

Gear that shows up when it matters

Not everything has to come from us. Some of the best gifts I've ever given were the boring practical ones: a good headlamp, wool socks that actually stay dry, a decent water filter. If your person camps or backpacks, ask them what's currently held together with duct tape. That's your answer.

The gift of a trip

If you can swing it, nothing beats time. An annual national parks pass is around eighty dollars and gets you into every park in the country for a year. Pair it with a sticker or two for the parks you're planning to hit, and you've basically handed someone a year of small adventures.

One note on timing

Since I embroider our crewnecks to order, they take a little longer to reach you than something off a shelf. So if you're shopping for a holiday or a birthday, order sooner rather than later and I'll make sure it reaches you in time. Stickers ship fast.

Whatever you land on, my honest advice is to skip the generic and go specific. The mug that says "adventure awaits" is fine. The one that names the trail where they got engaged, or the park they visited every summer as a kid? That's the one they keep.

Happy trails,
Tara