Space Shuttle Emergency Landing Strip

when we were constructing a temporary radar site at the White Sands Missile Range. It was the first Saturday in April, 1993. We got to visit the Trinity Site (ground zero of the first atomic bomb) and then found our way to the emergency shuttle landing strip. We had fun racing down the packed gypsum sand … until MPs explained to us that our base passes were only for us to get to our job sites, do our work, and then leave – actually, that didn’t happen at the strip, it happened while we were skinny dipping in a spring pool at the base of a dune.