Canada is all set to celebrate its sesquicentennial birthday, and one of the most exciting Canada 150 initiatives is that the national park pass – known as a Discovery Pass – is completely free for all of 2017.

The Discovery Pass grants access not only to Canada’s incredible national parks, but also to the Parks Canada managed historic sites and marine conservation areas. Parks Canada operates 171 national historic sites, 46 national parks, 4 national marine conservation areas, and even 8 historic canals. The Discovery Pass grants day use of both front and back country areas, as well as lockage at canals on historic Canadian waterways.

With the Discovery Pass, which would otherwise cost over $135 for the year, you can visit any of these amazing destinations to your heart’s content. There is simply too much to explore to manage seeing even a fraction of what Canada has to offer in just one year, but you can certainly use 2017 to kick-start your adventures.

Parks Canada administered locations throughout the country make up an important part of the Canadian identity. All of the places which a free Discovery Pass will allow you to go are sites of natural and historical heritage. Canada’s national parks are known for their breathtaking beauty all around the world, and to be able to visit them for free is an incredibly opportunity.

Where you go with your Discovery Pass is entirely up to you, but, if you’d like some suggestions, you should definitely try to visit one or more of the following locations:

– Banff National Park (Canada’s very first national park)

– Gros Morne National Park

– Pacific Rim National Park

– Riding Mountain National Park

– Thousand Islands National Park

– L’Anse aux Meadows (a reconstructed Viking village)

– Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park

When free Discovery Passes first became available on the Parks Canada website on December 1, 2016, the demand for them was so overwhelming that the website crashed. Within just the first week, there were over 500,000 orders for Discovery Passes both from Canadians and from people all around the world who plan on visiting Canada this year.

Don’t worry if you missed the initial Discovery Pass frenzy. Free Discovery Passes will be available, both online from Parks Canada and in person at Parks Canada locations across the country for all of 2017. If you don’t have a Parks Canada location close to home, then you don’t have to go out of your way to get one. You can simply pick up a Discovery Pass on your way to visit a national park or other Parks Canada site.

If you’ve been waiting for the right time to really begin exploring this beautiful country, then there’s no better time to start than in 2017, with a free Discovery Pass hanging from your rear-view mirror. Any group traveling together in the same vehicle requires only one Discovery Pass, so pack as many friends and family together as will fit and hit the road!