[traffic passing]
- DAVE: A lot of people stop when they see me on the road.
"Why are you walking?"
They offer me a ride, and I have to turn them down.
One guy says, "You mean you're doing this on purpose?"
It's not a race, it's not a program.
It's more like a lifestyle.
This is just what I wanna be doing.
- NARRATOR: Dave Roberts is out for a walk.
He has been for months.
- DAVE: I'm a little more than three months
since I left New Orleans.
- NARRATOR: Dave is walking to New Mexico,
taking in miles of Texas along the way.
- DAVE: That looks like a watermelon from here.
Palmetto is my 26th state park.
I've gone about 2,200 miles since New Orleans,
so I'm more than halfway through the state of Texas.
One guy says, "Well, you know, there's a bus.
"You can just take a bus to El Paso."
He didn't get it.
I think I'd rather walk.
[upbeat music]
[footsteps]
I don't wanna just sit at home
and play card games on the computer
and raid the refrigerator every 10 minutes and get fat and lazy.
I wanna be outdoors, I wanna breathe unfiltered air.
I want the weather to affect me.
I wanna meet people I've never met.
I wanna go places I've never been.
And that's the lifestyle that I've chosen for myself.
Since I left New Orleans, I've used up five pairs of shoes.
And I'm ready for my sixth,
so I'll get a pair in one of these towns.
[music]
This is the kind I normally get right here,
but they don't have my size.
They look like they'll work.
Ten bucks, [laughs] I'm buying $10 shoes.
Okay, now I need to get a new pair of insoles.
They last about 400 miles per pair.
They were getting a little thin on the bottom.
[register beeps]
I just didn't wanna feel the road under my feet
and so I bought a new pair of shoes.
- STORE CLERK: Be safe.
- DAVE: Thank you.
They're comfortable, they work,
and I'm happy as a clam.
- NARRATOR: Using up shoes traversing Texas on foot
may sound extreme, but this is just one in a series
of outdoor adventures for Dave.
[upbeat guitar music]
- I'm weaving across America.
I didn't start out with that in mind,
just happened one step at a time.
It all started hiking Appalachian Trail.
[upbeat guitar music]
I was just gonna hike the trail and go home.
But it was such an awesome experience,
I didn't want it to stop.
When I got to Maine, I rode my bicycle to Florida
and then I hiked the Florida Trail,
and so I find I'm zig-zagging across the country.
Somewhere in Florida, I got the idea that,
I think I'll paddle down the Mississippi River,
so how do I get to Minnesota?
I'll ride my bike.
Hiking, biking and paddling.
This summer, I paddle down the Mississippi River.
So I had to get from New Orleans to New Mexico,
so how do you get there?
Well, you walk across Texas.
[truck passes]
And so that's what I'm doing.
I'm visiting state parks,
and right now I'm in Lockhart, Texas.
This is my 27th one, I think.
I told some of my friends,
"Ah, I'm gonna walk across Texas,"
and they said, "Why Texas?"
You know, they think Texas is just desert.
I said, "Well, I looked at the website,
"and it looks to me like there's a lot more
than just desert out there."
[birds chirping]
- Past your campsite, there's more trails...
- DAVE: Visiting state parks has made my trip
much more interesting.
- You're all set.
- Okay, thank you very much.
I've met some of the most warmhearted people
I've ever met in Louisiana and Texas.
I made a spreadsheet.
At 15 miles a day, how many state parks can I do?
That came out to 23 state parks.
When I got to Tyler, I was a week and a half
ahead of schedule.
I was doing 23 miles a day, not 15.
So far, I've done Village Creek, Martin Dies, Mission Tejas,
Martin Creek, Tyler, Daingerfield, Bob Sandlin,
Cooper, Bonham, Eisenhower, Ray Roberts, Richardson,
Possum Kingdom, Mineral Wells, Dinosaur Valley, [laughs]
Cleburne, Whitney, Meridian, Mother Neff, Colorado Bend,
um, Inks Lake, Enchanted Rock, McKinney Falls,
Bastrop, Buescher, Palmetto, and Lockhart.
And I have 13 to go.
Something like that.
[slow instrumental music]
That's my tent.
This is my sleeping pad.
This my food.
That's the heavy one.
My sleeping bag.
And this is my dry clothing.
And that's it.
This is the fourth tent I've had in two years.
One was lost, one was stolen,
one was melted in a dryer,
and now I have this one.
My budget is 20 dollars a day.
For a lot of people, getting by isn't really enough.
The attitude is more important than the gear.
Put all my stuff in it, and then I'm ready
to have lunch and take a walk.
I don't have a knife, so I cut my cheese with my teeth
and I put on my salsa.
I was having three of these for lunch a day,
and realized that I was still hungry,
and so now I have four.
[laughs]
[crickets chirp]]
I have a saying, if everything goes according to plan,
you're not having an adventure yet [laughs].
It's really blowing.
- NARRATOR: Two months and one pair of shoes later,
Dave is in far west Texas.
- This is quite a headwind we got here today.
- NARRATOR: He's back on the road after a medical time out.
- I had a pain in my chest, went to the doctor,
and he suggested I go for further checkups,
so I went home to do that.
- NARRATOR: The diagnosis?
Heart burn.
- There's nothing wrong with me.
Physically, I'm in good shape, but I need to change my diet,
and I'm glad I did that.
- NARRATOR: Dave picked up where he left off in Del Rio.
After days crossing desert, he is outside Fort Davis.
- Now I feel assured, if I'm out in the middle of nowhere
a thousand miles from the nearest hospital,
that I'm okay.
I feel confident to just go and do it at my age.
I'm 72.
[truck passing]
My biggest concern, going from here to El Paso,
is getting enough water.
- After the pecan orchards, there's really not much water...
till Van Horn.
- NARRATOR: Where towns are scarce,
Dave eats dehydrated meals his daughter mails,
and what food he can find to fit his budget and backpack.
[jazzy music]
Two boxes of cereal.
That's three days.
These are gonna be my dinners.
Sandwich bags.
My pack weighs 13 pounds, plus food and water.
Four days worth of food, that's 10 pounds right there.
This is heavy too, but you gotta eat [laughs].
- CLERK: That's gonna be $28.92.
- DAVE: That's not bad.
- There you go.
I wish you good luck.
- DAVE: Thanks a lot.
Here I go.
Ooh, this is heavy now.
- NARRATOR: Not surprisingly, Dave skips convenience
for primitive camping.
[footsteps, wind]
- In a way, I'm out here to escape...
the hubbub and the business of the modern world.
I can live in that world, but I prefer this.
It's actually beautiful.
You get to see forever up here.
Took me an hour and a half to get up here,
[laughs] but it was worth it.
[somber instrumental music]
Twenty to twenty-five years ago, I had a dream.
In my dream, I died and I went to heaven.
Saint Peter looks at me, and he looks down at his book,
and he looks at me again, and he says,
"Why didn't you take advantage
of what they had to offer down there?"
End of dream.
That's why I woke up and I said,
"Wow, that's pretty powerful."
So not long after that, I quit my job,
and I decided that I was going to spend
the rest of my life volunteering.
So I joined the Peace Corps.
- NARRATOR: A mountaintop seems like the perfect place
to contemplate the next adventure.
- My next adventure is to hike the Continental Divide Trail,
which goes from Mexico to Canada.
The Triple Crown is the Appalachian Trail,
the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.
I've already done the AT, planning to do the CDT
this summer, and if I can do the Pacific Crest Trail,
then that's the Triple Crown.
Nobody that I know has ever done the Triple Crown
entirely after the age of 70,
so that'll be my claim to fame,
for what it's worth [laughs].
To me, this is just really special.
Being up here in God's country
and being able to see the sunset from a setting like this.
That's part of the reward, it's part of it.
I'd climb quite a few mountains to see something like that.
This is my front yard [laughs].
[inspirational instrumental music]
♪ ♪
When I get up in the morning,
I just get up, pack up, and go.
My Texas adventure was awesome.
I feel like I belong.
It's not like you're just out there.
I didn't feel alone at all, because there's so many people
that are interested in what I'm doing.
- Travel safe.
- DAVE: Thank you, Texas.
Looking to see where I'm gonna be going today.
There's a lot of nothing out there.
If you are looking for something to do
during your time, don't do what I'm doing.
Look deep in yourself, and find out what is the thing
that you can do that nobody else can do.
And do it.
[inspirational instrumental music]
♪ ♪