Bright and early on Sunday, August 9th, we gathered for our yearly cruise North to Fess Parker's Resort in beautiful Santa Barbara, California. This year our Santa barbara cruise was organized by Cari Washington (left, below) and Ken Latka (below, right). The cruise was planned to perfection--good job guys!

This was our longest cruise of the year. Forty-six cars motored North from the San Fernando Valley. Everything was going well until we all moved to the left lane to exit the freeway in Santa Barbara (it's a left-hand exit). A California Highway Patrol officer took exception to our going too slow in the "fast lane"! Too fast; too slow. Just proves you can't please all of the people all of the time.

As you can see above, our mile-long caravan of Impalas was longer than the off-ramp and we knew we needed help safely exiting the fast lane of the freeway. So, Cari Washington and Ken Latka got us some help from the Santa Barbara Police Department (next year we'll try to get some help on the freeway too). The Operations Division of the Santa Barbara Police Department had Sergeant Daryl Skare waiting for us, and he blocked the intersection so that we could "cruise" through the stop sign at the bottom of the off-ramp and on to our destination. It's so nice to feel special, and we were certainly treated well by the Santa Barbara P.D. We all felt sorry for the officer—the City of Santa Barbara made him a Crown Victoria!

After our great and not so great law enforcement experiences, we arrived at Fess Parker's Resort and a beautiful 85 degree day at the beach. Again, Cari and Ken had organized everything perfectly. Parking for the cars was barricaded off for us, and a buffet was waiting on the patio overlooking the blue Pacific ocean.

It was late and everyone was hungry, so we all hit the buffet line and then tried to find a shady spot under an umbrella to eat. While everyone else was getting something to eat, Chino Barreto, our "official" photographer, was on the top floor of the hotel getting this great picture of our happy cruisers enjoying the great California weather. Santa Barbara was Chino's last SoCalSS cruise. He returned home to Indianapolis two weeks later. All of us at SoCalSS really miss Chino and the website especially misses his great pictures.

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Last Update: 1/2/99