Coyote Creek State Park Offers Nature Programs, Family-Friendly Camping
(excerpt
from the Albuquerque Journal published Thursday, August 11, 2005)
By Rick Nathanson
Journal Staff Writer
COYOTE CREEK STATE PARK— "This is way better than just sitting around a fire and roasting marshmallows," says Ralph Garcia.
The Albuquerque resident is instead spending the evening in an open meadow at Coyote Creek with his family. They and about 50 other campers, many of them children and teens, are attending a star party led by amateur astronomer Peter Lipscomb.
Swiveling his 61/2-foot-tall Newtonian reflector telescope around the heavens, Lipscomb first focuses on Vega, which at 25 light years away is one of the closest stars to the Earth. Then it's on to the giant gas planet, Jupiter, the Hercules Star Cluster, the Ring Nebula, and the stellar nursery designated as M8. As each new celestial body comes into view, people line up to peer through the telescope, and Lipscomb gladly fields questions.
"It's pretty cool," says 12-year-old Zoey Aranda-Tafoya of Albuquerque, after gazing through the telescope. "I'm already interested in astronomy, so it's nice to look at the stars. In the city you really can't see them."
The star party comes as a pleasant surprise to Garcia, too. "This is a real treat," he says. "It's different, it's educational, and it's wonderful seeing all the kids out here. There should be more of this kind of thing."
And there is— pretty much at all of New Mexico's state parks and all year long, says state parks director Dave Simon."In the last year, we did close to 2,600 interpretive programs. Some parks do more than others, but all the parks participated in the effort."
The 32 state parks are "outdoor classrooms," Simon says, adding that the goal is "to fill those classrooms with students of all ages because the potential for the state parks to contribute to education is limitless."
Interpretive programs have been conducted on bats, bears, butterflies, birds, wildflowers and wild cats. There are night time nature walks, living history demonstrations, and, of course, fishing clinics.
Lipscomb operates Santa Fe-based Astronomy AdventuresÔ, which conducts guided night sky tours, but he volunteers his time with the state parks. More than "just cool places to camp," the state parks "have a mission to preserve our natural resources, and our night skies are a valuable resource, as well as an element of our cultural heritage," he says.
"When you look at our night skies, you're looking at the sky of our ancestors, who used the same celestial bodies to navigate to the New World and to determine when to plant crops and when to harvest."
(c) image and text property of Albuquerque
Publishing Company/Albuquerque Journal used with permission
