The Boneyard 10K

I have posted pics from Tucson's Boneyard before and many of you seen pics of it. The Boneyeard is the common name for the 339th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG). AMARG prepares military planes for storage, strips old planes for parts and recycles old planes. They have over 4,000 planes parked on site.

Pima Air and Space Museum offers a bus tour of AMARG but you never get off the bus. You can walk or bike outside the fence and look in at some sections (there is even a bike trail and picnic tables around some sections so obviously they expect people to do this) but normally you can't get inside.

I finally got to be inside, not in a bus on March 1st. They sponsored the 2nd Boneyard 5k/10k. I missed the first one...didn't hear about it until I saw pics in the paper the day after. When I saw it announced for this year, I made sure to sign up so I could run around this interesting site.

No spectators were allowed...only registered runners (or walkers...the generous time limit was walker friendly) and they checked tickets at the gate. It was a fun run...there was a clock but they didn't record finish times.

Which is just as well I stopped to take lots of pictures (and I wasn't the only one taking pics!) I just used my cellphone camera...not going to run with a big DLSR. They had little signs along the course telling you about some of the more significant planes.

We started on the west side of Kolb Road. The west side is where planes go into storage or they store spare parts (like wings). Theoretically, planes on this side of the road could fly again. Here are some pics from the west side.

I am happy I did the 10k the 5k course stayed exclusively on the west side of the road. The 10k, however, crossed the bridge to the east side. The east side is where planes go to die. These planes are frequently missing large, important parts and will never fly again. Here are some east side pics. Look closely at the first one...the folded wing planes are obviously carrier based...and the row on the right have props! Yes, propeller driven carrier based planes. I know the existed but I had never seen one in person.

The show was not done after the race. This was the weekend of the Heritage Fly In.  Shortly after the race, an F-22 took off and started flying around doing all kinds of stunts. Very impressive. The pilot hit the afterburners a couple of time and went ballistic...literally, not figuratively.

As you can see, the day was cloudy. Unfortunately, the weather started deteriorating a little before 11am and I decided it was time to head home for a hot shower. Overall, a great morning and you can bet I will be back next year...and invite friends.