At 324 S. State Street, Suite 200, here in Salt Lake City, is located the National Park Service managing office for four National Historic Trails: the Mormon Pioneer Trail; the California Trail; the Oregon Trail (despite the fact that it doesn’t enter Utah); and the Pony Express.

Unfortunately (for stamp enthusiasts), it is an office occupying a suite on the second floor of an office building, and is not a visitor center per se. Therefore, obtaining the muffin stamps from this place is a M-F 9-5 affair. They have plenty of brochures and even the more detailed NPS books for these trails for free, the latter of which are normally sold for around $5 in visitor center bookstores. There was only one guy in the whole office at the time, as far as I could tell, and he was in a meeting, but he broke away from it long enough to get the 4 stamps out of a cabinet and set me up with an inkpad and a blank piece of paper for practicing on.

I was after all 4 stamps for multiple dates:

When I moved out to SLC, with the help of Sheryl, we were on all 4 trails on Thursday, March 27 and Friday, March 28, 2008 when we were driving along Interstate 80, between the Kearney, Nebraska exit to just about the North Platte, Nebraska exit (and a little further for some branches of the California Trail). At this point, all the trails headed NW to Fort Caspar [sic] in Casper, Wyoming before those headed on to SLC angled SW on their way to Fort Bridger. When Sheryl and I left Evanston, Wyoming, on March 29, we rejoined all but the Oregon Trail as they traveled through Echo Canyon, which is the stretch of I-80 between the Wyoming border and the I-84 junction. (The California Trail is complicated, with many branches, but those emigrants who visited the Salt Lake also traveled in this direction.) Therefore, I got all 4 stamps for Sheryl and I for March 27, when we first picked up the trails, and then the 3 stamps for March 29, when we rejoined them two states over.

When Mom came to visit in May, I took her to Ruth’s Diner in Emigration Canyon on May 9, 2008. As the name implies, this was the Canyon through which the Mormon Pioneers emigrated and the way that subsequent travelers arrived at Salt Lake City from points east. Actually, I was a little unsure about whether the Pony Express Trail stamp was valid; it goes in more of a north-south direction through the Salt Lake valley, rather than east-west and I was afraid that we merely crossed it rather than traveled along it, but in fact it passed through Emigration Canyon, as well. So, Mom and I earned the 3 muffin stamps for May 9, 2008 when we drove a few miles along this route.

Finally, I determined that I was going to travel to one of the “recommended” sites in Utah along the Pony Express NHT the next day, so I stamped my book for June 7, 2008.

After explaining all of this to the gentleman working there, I asked him if he would sign the index cards that I stamped for Sheryl and Mom, as well as my book, so that my backdating of our stampage was authorized by an NPS official. I think he was impressed by our enthusiasm for visiting national parks and was happy to play along.