The Breakfast
Club
An Affiliate of The
The Knife & Fork
Breakfast Club Visits Kingman, Airport
Cafe
12 Jan 08
by Warren McIlvoy
The January fly-in event for the Breakfast Club,
marked the beginning of the 15th year of fly-in activities.
Kingman was our destination and, as such, is becoming a favorite of the
fly-in breakfast community. The fact that the Airport Café
serves-up a "mean" and ample breakfast, has
not gone unnoticed in the aviation brotherhood.
The geography between the
After securing our aircraft, we crossed the ramp and entered the terminal
building and the Airport Café. The 35-members of the Breakfast Club took
all but three of the available tables that were indoors. If the weather had
been a bit warmer, we had planed to use the
patio but it was a tad bit too chilly for our thin blood. The café was a
typical airport eatery with a number of aviation related pictures on the walls
but nothing really outstanding. What the café may have lacked in
atmosphere, it more that made-up for it in breakfast. I had the chicken fried
steak and eggs with hash browns that completely covered the plate. The portions
were 747-sized and tasty to boot and another surprise was that the prices were
more like the size of a C-152.
Here are some interesting little known facts about Kingman:
Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale,
a Naval officer in the service of the U.S. Army Topographical Corps, was
ordered by the War Department to build a government-funded wagon road across
the 35th Parallel. His secondary orders were to test the feasibility of the use
of camels as pack animals in the southwestern desert. Beale traveled through
the present day Kingman in 1857 surveying the road and in 1859 to build the
road. The road became part of
Kingman, Arizona,
was founded in 1882. Situated in the scenic Haulapai
Valley between the Cerbat and Haulapai
mountain ranges, it is known for its very modest beginnings as a simple
railroad siding near Beale's Springs in the Middleton Section along the
newly-constructed route of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. The city of
Kingman is a
transportation center along the I-40 corridor, as well as for U.S. Highway 93,
Route
66, and the rail line of the BNSF Railway. It serves as the
southeastern gateway to the resorts of
Kingman has been featured as
a filming location for the movies Roadhouse 66, scenes from Universal Soldier
(Crazy Fred's Truckstop and a destroyed gas station
on Route 66) and Two-Lane Blacktop. In addition the first contact scene in the
movie "Mars Attacks" was filmed at nearby
According to the
Arizona Department of Public Safety, Jean Claude Van Damme
received a speeding ticket on I-40 during the filming of Universal Soldier.
In
"Otis", an episode of the television series Prison Break, LJ Burrows
is sent to an adult facility in
The town is
mentioned in the lyrics to the song "Route 66".
The Wendy's scene
in the movie Zoom was also filmed in Kingman.
Pamela Anderson
also did one of her 1992 Playboy photo shoots at the corner of 4th Street and
Andy Devine Avenue (Route 66), and was brought into the Kingman Police
Department for indecent exposure. She was not charged but asked to write a
letter of apology.
And you thought that Kingman was an insignificant
small town!
After our tasty breakfast meal, I
got some photos of the Breakfast Club throng and, just a tad later, some ramp photos of some of
the Breakfast Club aircraft. On our ride home, we took the "direct"
route at 7500' to take advantage of the tail wind. In either direction, the
ride was smooth as glass.
The Kingman Gathering
What's Next?
Our February event will see us
return to
Click on the Kingman link to view photos from this fly-in event.