National Park Pop-Up Trip

One of my favorite birthday presents this year was the America's National Park Pop-Up Book.

The description says:

"The book is a coast to coast journey featuring 18 of our most visited national parks, six as stunning double page pop-ups: Everglades, Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier and Yosemite national parks. Pop-up paper engineering is created by Bruce Foster, designer of 40 pop-up books, including the amazing Harry Potter pop-up book. The pop-up illustrations by Dave Ember are in the style of the WPA 1930s posters..."

I like the thickness of it - it let's you know this isn't really a kids pop-up book. I mean, you can let kids watch you look at it and they might enjoy from afar, but no dirty undexterous hands on this piece:

The back cover claims that the National Parks will come to life! And they do.

Here's the Grand Canyon:

And Yellowstone:

And a tiny book in the corner of the Glacier National Park page opens up to reveal a "jammer":

I loved this book almost as much as I love the National Parks and my National Park Passport. If they wanted any ideas for improvements on the next printing, I'd say they could include a useable human-size fold-out tent of the Ahwahnee Lodge at Yosemite:

I've always wanted to stay there. Imagine: Turn your card table into the Ahwahnee Lodge!  Grand idea. 

Get this book and then get me to the Everglades:

Cave Jams*

If you don't have photosynth, you are just a slave to your camera's regular old pano function. 

Mammoth Cave!

They call it a grand, gloomy and peculiar place - my kind of people. 

I wanted these to look dark and creepy in order to give the impression that we were NOT in a group of 115 people, 70 of them using flash cameras to take a picture every five steps. 

*New drinking game: Watch The East and drink every time you hear the word jam.