Passport to Texas

Robert Newman. Photo Credit: elpasotriathlete.blogspot.com

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This is Passport to Texas

Seventy-nine year old retired math teacher Robert Newman looks after the Franklin Mountains; he hand builds the trails visitors enjoy.

I just take it day-by-day. One Rock at a time. Ah…it looks alright.

For fifteen years, Robert has done this difficult work on his own. And says he doesn’t mind because the surroundings are beautiful.

Now this is going to be a pretty rough ride, I’m going to go very slow. Today we are at the Tom Mays unit of the Franklin Mountains State Park, and we’re going on up to where we are working on a new trail. There’s existing trails, well actually old bulldozed roads basically. That are really tough, so I’m trying to put in one that’s more user friendly!

Robert takes his old jeep up the side of the mountain as far as it will go, before walking the last half mile over rocky terrain to his work site where, with simple tools, creates trails.

When I’m out here working on a trail I have basically three settings: the first setting is very slow. The second setting is even slower, and the third setting is stopped. And stopped eats up more time than the other two put together. When I’m out here working most of the time I’m sitting and I’ll just sit and look in awe at what’s out here.

Enjoy the scenery and meet Robert Newman on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS next week. Check your local listings.

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

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2016 at 12:00 am and is filed under TPWD TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.