Scottsdale
Breakfast Club
An Affiliate of
the Arizona
Pilots Assn
The
Knife & Fork
Breakfast Club Makes Annual
Trek to Lake Havasu
Dines at The Makai Café
12 Oct 2014
By Warren McIlvoy
Our October Breakfast Club event saw us heading west in what
has become an annual ritual migration to Lake
Havasu, Arizona. This flight is just slightly over an hour
depending on aircraft speed and it does offer a modicum of desert and mountain
scenery.
Our direct line route
will take us over Wickenburg, Arizona
and then over a series of colorful mountain ridges with the whimsical names
such as: The Harcuvar Mountains, and the Buckskin Mountains
with some rather broad valleys between them.
Alamo Lake
is one of the more notable landmarks along the way with Crossman
Peak that is just to the east of Lake Havasu.
Along the way we kept
in touch with other Breakfast Club members
via our “group flight following” frequency.
As I made the turn around the south end of Crossman Peak,
I could hear the chatter of aircraft in the pattern and since the winds were
calm, everyone was using runway 32. If
the pattern is congested, it is a good practice to overfly the airport at 500’
above pattern and continue to the northwest and then make a descending turn
onto the 45 to the left downwind for runway 32.
Today, there was a pretty good break in the traffic that allowed me to
overfly the departure end of 32 and turn to the downwind.
We have always used Desert
Skies for our meeting point as they let us use there two vans to get us into
town. It is about a 7-mile drive to the Makai
Café and the London Bridge and with 26
people in tow, it took two trips to get everyone to our destination. I had made reservations for our group and had
requested that we get to use the outside patio dinning area but that wasn’t to
be. I always preferred the patio as it
overlooks the lake channel and boat marinas along with the adjoining London Bridge. Although we did have to sit inside, we were
able to all sit in the same area.
After a good breakfast
and swapping flying stories with some to the other Breakfast
Club folks, I took the opportunity to get some photos of what make this
location so famous. There are few
destinations that offer “Kodak”
moments that Lake Havasu does. The Makai
Café is on the lower level of a “shopping
mall” that caters to the tourist.
The adjoining river channel is lined with boat docks and small
beaches. As you might recall from my
story of last year, the London
Bridge was constructed on
dry land and once completed, the channel was dug under the bridge. The large finger of land that we were now on,
became an island. The original Lake
Havasu Airport was located on this island but the land became to valuable to host this noisy neighbor and a new airport
was constructed to the north. Upon departure from the airport, if you overfly
the lake, you can still see the remains of the old runway. During
spring break, this area is saturated with collage kids looking for that perfect
tan to show-off when they return to their “rust
belt” homes. The “eye candy” here at that time would
invoke memories of our own younger days.
By now it was time to
get everyone back to the airport the same way that we got here; two trips for the van drivers thus ending yet
another fabulous day of eating and flying.
The Lake
Havasu Gang
- Warren & Jeri-Ann McIlvoy
with Imran Jamali in 93MB, BC-1 & 1.5
- Paul Fortune and Richard Azimov in 31870, BC-2 and 201
- John & Pat
Rynearson in 3501S, BC-117
- Glen Yoder and ? Santos in 31TC, BC-007
- Jim Palmer, Jeff Jacobes, and Ronnie Lea
in 9313H,
- Richard Spiegel,
Sam and Tami Foote, and Debi LaRosa in 901KA, BC-3
- Austin Erwin,
Rich Kupiec, and Ron Greenbank in 6693M, BC-86, BC-47
- Greg Coomans
and Jon Slaughter in 4280W, BC-48
- Chuck Waldrop and Grace Parsons in 5409D
- Adam Rosenberg, Swathi Seethepally, and Divakar Chittury in 8377W, BC-72
- Scott & Judy McNeil in 9736Y
- Roger Whittier
and ?
What’s Next?
Our November event
will see us finally returning to White
River, Arizona and
the White Mountain Apache Motel. In December,
we will be traveling north (in the winter?) to Mesquite, NV
and the Wolf Creek Golf Resort. That’s
all for now but remember, fly safe.
To view photos of
this Breakfast Club event, just click on Lake
Havasu