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FishNet Explore '98 - Wednesday, June 24, 1998
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John Kuhns Says....
This was out last official day, actually, morning, together with John and Heiko and Paulo. We spent the night in Alamogordo, New Mexico at a small family-owned motel. We all had breakfast together at a Denny's Restaurant before taking our separate roads. John and the others gave us a full report on the encounter in the desert with Tim Tibbits at Quitovaquito Spring, We were appalled, as I think anyone would be, by the reported actions of this one individual.
Our family drove back to the west a few miles to White Sands National Monument. I hadn't been there since I was a child and my memory of it was that it was quite breath-taking. I wasn't disappointed! We drove into the monument's entrance and the first thing we noticed were all of the flags at half-mast. We checked in at the visitor's center, bought some books and picked up other free literature and I bought a souvenir cloisonné pin for my hat. We then drove out into the park to marvel at the sugar white dunes of gypsum sand.
Unlike the other, very hot, sands we had encountered in Ash Meadows and especially Death Valley and Organ Pipe, the white sand was quite cool. One could dig one's toes down a couple of inches below the surface and the sand was actually cold and slightly moist. On our way out of the park we again stopped at the visitor's center.
While I waited outside with Livvy, Carol and Ginger went in to ask about the White Sands pupfish, Cyprinodon tularosae (named after the Tularosa River which flows through this valley). They reported back that the pupfish population was restricted to a small spring within the White Sands Missile Range, but that it was healthy and its care and protection was being handled by the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Carol showed me a section of the White Sands information book that told about the fish, its first discovery, and its survival ups and downs. I was later told that getting into the missile range, to see the habitat, was fairly easy....getting out again, I was told, was a different story!
Looking back, it was clear to me that we should have probably made contact with the researchers at the university for permission to see and photograph this spring and its unique pupfish species. We can do this on another trip.
One last note; we asked about the flags being flown at half-mast and were told that on the previous Sunday, Father's Day, a ranger, out in the dunes, had been shot to death by an unknown assailant with a rifle shot. The ranger had a family and small children.