Bataan Memorial Death March - In-Processing

In all other marathons that I have participated in, in-processing is packet pickup.  I like the use military terms at the Bataan March.  Reading the website, there were many acronyms for the military that left me bewildered.  Friday we flew  to El Paso through Houston.  Its not an inexpensive flight.  With some of the other Bataan reports that I had read, it sounded like line at in-processing could be long.  So, we decided to in-process on Friday.  I would highly recommend this. The drive from El Paso to Las Cruses is uneventful except for the millions of cows at the farms as it looked like they were doing a little in-processing of their own.

Of course, the mountains were beautiful too

 

but we would hike up close to the Organ mountains the next day.  Once checked into our hotel, the Staybridge, we decided to make the drive to White Sands for in-processing.  Its a short 20 mile drive and through a beautiful pass between the Organ Mountains and San Andreas.  Once on top of the pass, you can see the missile range and white sands. 

 
 

There are some interesting signs on the base and we tried to take as many as possible but with over 700 pictures in general, only a few can be posted. 

The range is off in the distance

 

Hmmmm....

 

The main gate

Starting in-processing in front of Rocky Boots, a sponsor

Nice Program

 


Heavy categories must weigh their bags - 35 pounds



Marcher Vehicle Pass

Missile Museum
 

My number and sack



 



We explored a bit on the base and realized how much R&D was done there.  In-processing was easy on Friday but the way they single-filed everyone through it might have been more difficult on Saturday.  There was a survivor there signing autographs as well.  Overall, it was a good experience and got to explore the base and missile museum.

Today Day 84: 4 miles: 2014: 452 miles