Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Philipp Hübner, from Austin, spent his formative years in Tennessee. His outdoor story is about the value of befriending landowners.

One of the things that strikes me about the great outdoors is there are so many beautiful places that are on private lands. One of the places that comes to mind is in Central Tennessee, up in the Cumberland Mountains, a place called Hardscrabble Falls, which a friend of mine and I had heard about, but could never find on any maps or any places official.

And, from there, we just really grew to appreciate the relationships that people can build with other people that might have beautiful scenery and other attractions on their own private land. So, I’d encourage anybody that has the opportunity to do that, by all means do it. And, enjoy what’s out there.

Thanks, Philipp. Visit passportotexas.org and tell us your outdoor story.

That’s our show for today… Remember: Life’s Better Outside…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Paul Dockery, from San Antonio, emailed his outdoor story to us through our website: passporttotexas.org.

He told us he’s an avid outdoorsman and a member of the Christian Outdoor Alliance, http://www.mycoa.org/. He shares his favorite times spent in the outdoors.

You know, it’s not that any one in particular thing happens. It’s just the fact that we get to get to get away and spend some quality time together. And we’ll be out on God’s front porch enjoying the beautiful weather and just enjoying each other.

My favorite times in the outdoors are when I get to load up with my wife and the kids. And we’ll have an ice chest and some goodies in it, and some folding chairs and a portable grill, and we’ll drag our boat out to a riverbank somewhere in the Hill Country. And just spend the day getting by on what we didn’t forget to bring.

We’ll have some fishing rods, and things like that, and probably take the dog with us, and spend the day out enjoying the Hill Country.

Visit passportotexas.org and send us your outdoor story. We may invite you to tell it to Passport to Texas listeners, like Paul did. And if we use your story, we’ll send you a Life’s Better Outside t-shirt!

That’s our show for today… Remember: Life’s Better Outside…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Austin resident, Bill Harwell’s, paternal grandmother and his great aunt Edna loved to fish… and often invited Bill and his cousin to share the adventure. This is his story:

One night I got the exciting news that my great aunt had come into possession of – what we called – a pontoon boat. But the even better part of it was we were going to go night fishing, which we had never done before. Her living in Atlanta, the best place to put in was a big lake, just southwest of Texarkana called Wright Patman Lake.

And so my cousin and I – we were probably about eight…nine…ten years old at the time…this is around 1960 -61 something like that — get all of our gear aboard (the two of us and these two ladies).

They tell us they’d been told that the best thing to attract fish, above and beyond the worms and the minnows, is to hang a couple of lanterns off the side of the pontoon boat…. maybe that is the best way to do it… but my main recollection was just this incredible plague-like swarm of June bugs, mosquitoes…getting bugs of all sorts and shapes in our soft drinks….up our noses…. We did do some good fishing, but the overwhelming remaining impression of night fishing for me is lots and lots of bugs.

Share your outdoor story with us when you visit the Passport to Texas website.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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