The Breakfast Club
An Affiliate of the
Arizona
Pilots Assn
The
Knife & Fork
Breakfast Club Drops In On Tucson/Ryan & Todds’
Café
17 Nov 2012
by Warren McIlvoy
There are a number of good
“airport” restaurants in southern Arizona but
one of the better choices would be Todd’s
Café at Tucson, Ryan Airport. To get there from Deer Valley
Airport is quite easy by
traversing the “West Corridor” of the Phoenix
Class B airspace. As a matter of
fact, on this particular Saturday, the controller cleared me on my way before I
had gotten half way between Sky Harbor and South
Mountain.
For the most part, you are
following I-10 to the south east until reaching a point just north of Eloy.
This is where we will fly just west of the Interstate to avoid the
sky-diving activity that dominates this airport. Continuing south from there, we will pass to
the west of the Picacho Peak
area and the “bone yard” that is more
formally known as Pinal County Airpark. Just a tad further south is Marana Airport
that has another good “airport” restaurant.
This is where we start monitoring Ryan
to get a picture of the activity around the airport. Since we were approaching from the north, Ryan Tower
had us make a base leg entry to runway 6L.
This was one of the very rare times that I have landed on 6L as I have
almost always used 6R. After getting
clearance to cross 6R, the long taxi to the ramp parking will take you passed
all the hangar rows that are between the restaurant parking and the active
runways.
As you might expect, Saturday
mornings at Todd’s is pretty busy
but we did manage to get a couple of the large, curved booths that adequately
served our needs. My niece and here
husband live down here so I arranged for them to meet us there to share our breakfast
with the Breakfast
Club group. The menu selections are ample and the prices
are reasonable which, I guess, is why this is such a popular place. After breakfast, we headed out to the ramp to
get a few more photos and to continue our visit with my niece and her husband
before loading-up and heading back north.
We did not have a large attendance
at this fly-in but sometimes smaller is good too as the pace tends to be slower
and the conversations longer. After a
few hugs and good-bys, we boarded our aircraft and headed home.
The Ryan Gang
- Warren & Jeri McIlvoy
in 93MB, BC-1 & 1.5
- John and Nick Rynearson
in 3501S, BC-117
- Tom & Jeannie Hall (Tucson folks)
- Richard Spiegel, Sam
Foote, and Kim Boardman in 15040, BC-3 & BC-53
- Steve & Karen Brown
in 57LW
What’s Next?
The December Breakfast Club fly-in will be to another favorite with that being Seligman, Arizona
and Lilo’s West Side Café. The January fly-in will be to one of the
hidden gems of the southwest hidden in Winslow, Arizona,
the La Posada Hotel and the Turquoise Dinning Room. This event will also kick-off our 19th year
of monthly fly-ins and the La Posada
is a grand way to do it.
To view the photos of this event,
just click on the link below.
Ryan
Photos