Passport to Texas

The day Dale Blasingame bought his Texas State Park pass. Photo credit: Dale Blasingame.

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This is Passport to Texas

A dream is a wish your heart makes. So says the song from the 1950s Disney classic, Cinderella. Perhaps the night Dale Blasingame had a dream about driving around the country—his heart was revealing its deepest wish.

I woke up that next day, and it was all I could think about—and I was coming to the end of the semester and I was about to have a break. And so I just decided to go for it. And so, I went on this trip across the entire west.

During his travels, Dale—a social journalism lecturer at Texas State University—visited national parks.

When I got home, it was one of those vacation blues type things, where I was just kind of bored. And a friend of mine suggested that I go to a state park. And, that kind of spawned the whole thing.

That thing: visit Texas’ 95 state parks in a single year. He writes about his journey in the January/February issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

I really didn’t do a ton of planning. There were a couple of times I took big, huge trips and I would hit 15 or 18 parks at one time. But it really just kind of started as: ‘Okay, here’s this one. This is the next closest one—I’m going to go there…’  I’d wake up on a Saturday morning, or I’d think about it the Friday the night before, and ask: ‘Where am I going to go tomorrow?’

Tomorrow Dale Blasingame tells us how he found a hiking buddy. Read his story, One is Not Enough, in the January/February issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

That’s our show… Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.