Santiago Oaks Park Tour & Picnic
Submitted By: Terry Hardgrave
This past Saturday saw 42 people driving 17 various Model A's plus a few moderns, attend and participate in this popular club event. We met at the Village of Orange , in front of Sears, and departed shortly after 9:00 am. Our first stop was a brief visit just down the street to Villa Ford, where we were able to park all of the “A's” in front of the showroom for some pictures, to help celebrate “International Model A Ford Day.”
After about half an hour, we departed on the tour, which wound through parts of Villa Park and Lemon Heights, on down to Santiago Canyon Road and then Live Oak Canyon Road, which is some fun Model A driving, particularly the beautiful canopy of Live Oak trees that we passed through. For this year's event, we decided to split the tour into 2 smaller groups of cars, which made getting through intersections a little easier and keeping track of everyone. The fact that this is a non-freeway tour was also appealing to many.
About half way through the tour, we made a pre-planned stop at a McDonalds, so everyone could get out of their cars, rest, and have some refreshment. We then continued on, heading back toward our final destination, which including a very fun, challenging drive up Skyline Dr in the foothills …. challenging being to try and stay on the right road and not miss a turn!
We all ended up at Santiago Oaks Park which is a really neat, quiet park, with lots of shade and picnic tables, and plenty of parking. We then all shared our Potluck lunch, followed by Dean and Terry's homemade ice cream and apple pie. There was lots of lively discussion ‘round the tables, and by a little after 2:00 pm, most were ready to head home.
A special thanks for Dean and Pam Berto who did most of the work on this, including Pam getting at the park early to reserve our tables. Dean also pre-ran the route several times to make sure his instructions were right on .... successful tours like this don't just happen …. they take lots of planning, and it showed!
Make Sure you take a look at the Tour Pictures - See Tour Pictures Tab