Breakfast Club
An Affiliate of the
The Knife & Fork
Breakfast Club Returns to Parker/Blue
Water Resort & Casino
by Warren McIlvoy
15 Jan 2005
The
January Breakfast Club event to Parker marked the beginning of our 12th
year of monthly fly-in events. And what better place to celebrate this landmark
occasion than to make an encore visit to Parker and the Blue Water Resort and Casino. In January of 2004, we had our largest attendance of
any Breakfast Club event with more than 50 people choosing to participate in
that memorable outing.
And to make the day even more rewarding, the
weather gods smiled upon us with flying conditions being all you could ask for;
clear skies, no wind to speak of, and air that was as smooth as silk. After
passing through the Luke Alert Area, I dialed-in our "group flight
following" frequency to report in. A few of the early birds were ahead of
me and surly would arrive before I would land. After crossing over the
Buckskin Mountains that are about 18-20 miles east of Parker, I started a
slow descent out of 6500' for the pattern altitude of 1300'. We were using left
traffic for runway 19 and there was one other aircraft in the pattern ahead of
me. After making my usual(?) greaser landing, I taxied
to the ramp to join the early arrivals. Chuck & Irene Graves offered
to be our shuttle drivers today as they had a van that they kept at the
airport. Four trips had every body at the Blue Water for the buffet
breakfast.
As
you would expect for a "resort/casino, once you get past the check-in
desk, the main part of the floor is dominated by the ever popular slot
machines. The more daring ways to separate you from you money, are accommodated
in side rooms to the right of the slots. The buffet dinning room is to our left
and further back in the room. The Feast, as the buffet is called, is
moderately large and could easily accommodate several hundred people at any
given time. The largest table set-up would only handle about 8 people so our
group was pretty well scattered throughout the area. There were two serving
lines, one for the traditional morning entrees and another for fresh fruits and
pastries. The food was fairly good and the price was casino sized (two very
important factors for hungry aviators). The spectacular, indoor pool occupies the
entire west side of the main floor. The pool is actually a two story affair
that begins just below the main floor with a winding pool that ends-up at a
water slide. The water slide twists and turns until it dumps you off in the
main pool at the lower level.
There is obviously more to Parker than the Blue Water Resort and Casino so I would like to insert some information about the
history and geography of this
The Town
of
The Colorado River Indian Tribe reservation
straddles the
The
original town site of Parker was surveyed and laid out in 1909 by a railroad
location engineer by the name of Earl. H. Parker. However, the Town's name and
origin began when a post office was established January 6, 1871, on the Colorado
River Indian reservation to serve the Indian agency. The post office was named
Parker in honor of General Eli Parker who was Commissioner of Indian Affairs
when the Colorado River Indian reservation was established by Congress in 1865.
A
railroad was laid in its present location in 1905, and Parker post office was
moved upstream four miles to the railroad. Since the town site of Parker was
laid out for the purpose of providing a railroad stopover, watering and
shipping station, it was only logical that the railroad would run through the
center of the Town. The Town was laid out on a grid of 100 -foot streets
forming 300 x 4000 foot blocks with twelve 50- foot wide lots to a block. The
Federal Government auctioned off lots in 1910.
Agricultural
development, which is the present economical mainstay of the area, commenced on
March 2, 1867, when Congress appropriated $50,000 for the Indians' irrigation
system. This money was used for the construction of the Grant-Dent canal from
1867 to 1871. Early irrigated farming was dismal and painstaking - banks washed
away, canal caved in, wells served up alkali water, river flooding washed out
new construction and equipment. However, these early failures did not
discourage those who had visions of a great agricultural empire. By 1914 only
600 acres of Indian-owned land were being irrigated and inadequate drainage was
water logging the majority of those acres. At this time, the Town of
Regardless
of the frustrations and problems connected with irrigation, agricultural
activity on the reservation continued to expand while mining activity
slackened. In 1936, over 5,000 acres of river bottomland were under irrigation.
By 1941, when Headgate Rock Dam was constructed,
there were 10,5000 acres of land under cultivation,
and the guaranteed water level provided by the dam accelerated agricultural
expansion. By 1955, 38,000 acres had been cleared for farming. During the time
the Town of
In
1937, a highway bridge was completed across the Colorado River connecting
The
Town of
I don't know how many of the other folks opted to make donations to the local
economy but my wife managed to donate about $5 before we went back out to meet Chuck
for the ride back to the airport. Waiting any longer could have resulted in
this trip becoming more expensive that it already was. The ride home was every
bit as smooth as the morning's flight in. Flying conditions were so pleasurable
that it did not make any difference that I had a slight head wind making the
flight last just a tad longer.
I want to extend a great big tip of the "Royal
Knife & Fork" to Chuck
& Irene Graves for supplying the shuttle service to and from the
airport. That was very thoughtful of them and very much appreciated.
The Parker Gang
What's Next?
The February Breakfast Club event will see us making an encore visit to
Click on the Parker
link to view photos of this fly-in event.