This past weekend was the annual Route 66 Rendezvous put on by the city of San Bernardino, California.

Only having about 15-million other things to get done, my wife and I decided we needed to spend a few hours at the Rendezvous!

The weather was a lot more moderate than last-year’s heat-wave and, so it was we spent part of our Sunday afternoon.

The Rendezvous is all about families and fun, but it’s mainly about Cars.

There were a TON of beautiful rides out there, even though the organizers had limited the amount of vehicles that could participate. This was unlike last year where it was wall-to-wall Hot Rods, Kustoms, Low Riderz, Trucks etc.

The limited arrangement did nothing to dampen the turnout at the show.

There were beautiful rides of all sorts….

Lots of nicely restored Vintage rides….

…and the endless cruise around the town.

There were cars and trucks to suit any preference.

Lots of pearlecent, candy-apple, metalflake supercharged goodness.

The fully restored Old-timers were appreciated by all.

The ground-scraping low-ridaz were eveywhere…so low that if the pavement had gotten warm and softened, they might have been stuck there forever.

Like this cool, pearl-yellow ‘57 ragtop.

There were lots of celebrities in the crowd….

…and fashionable chapeaus were all the rage…

Dick Dale, “King of the Surf Guitar” (think “Miserlou“) was totally enjoying the action…

…and Candy Clark, from American Grafitti was signing autographs…

..as was Ed Byrnes who had played “Kookie” on the TV show “77 Sunset Strip” (ask your Mom….).

Also there was “Cujo” and his wife, the owners of Cujos World Famous Big Smoke Barbeque! What you never had one of their great BBQ sandwitches? Well, take it from me, they’re the best around (they even catered my wedding, so I know!).

As for Photography…we arrived later than I’d hoped, so we were greeted by the sun, high in the sky, which can make it a little harder to take photos that aren’t too contrasty and blowing out all the highlights or packing-up all the shadow detail.

In this situation I try to stay on the sunnier-side of the street, look for cars in the shadow areas (if possible) and mainly rely on the “Center-weighted” metering on my camera.

Using the “Average” metering can really blow-out the detail you might be capturing, where as with center-weighted, you can meter the areas you feel are most important and let the other areas land where they may. Ideally, you’d spot-meter the whole scene and make sure the exposure latitude was withing your sensor’s capabilities, but, like when you’re on vacation , you may have only a choice of taking the photo or not, instead of choosing what time of day you’re shooting.

Using a daylight white-balance (the sky was clear), and setting my color to Vivid (think Velvia film) for most of the shots, and setting the camera to (primarily) “Aperture” mode, I was able to pretty much capture the photos I wanted.

An amusingly-true sign for sale…

…and The Cars…awesome chrome dagmars everywhere.

Lots of cool details that catch your attention.

Even the “wheeled set” paid attention to the cool rides.

The kids had lots of fun on the carnival-rides…

…and getting soaked by the fire-hose…

…and checking out the “Bus-man”!

But, in the end, it’s all about the cars like this V-8 Volvo Grocery-getter….

and this topless lead-sled.

There was even a 390-powered Amc, a scarce representative of the muscle-car years.

Lots of porthole Buicks…

…a cool Hemi powered rod…

..a red-hot topless Nova…

…and, yes, another porthole Buick…

…a Camaro SS.

For those into something different, I present to you a 4×4 Corvette…

…even a “ProStock” Rambler made the parade!

The trucks were well represented. This fire-truck is a beautiful regular…

…check out the “Desert-Bag” hanging on the front of this primo Chevy!

The owners were great! This ‘57 Jimmy is painted in John-Deere green because it was a memory of his Dad’s farm in Ohio.

He’s also fabricating a 12′ truck-bed for the back of this beauty!

There were trucks on-top of trucks, like this awesome semi-combo.

For the ultimate, check out this dropped Peterbilt! Way too cool.

For eats, you could do worse than the famous “Space Shuttle Cafe“!

Trucks both new…

…and old made the show.

…the standard-bearer ‘55 chevys were all over the place…

..as were some choice chopped coupes.

A cool “Pro Street” Mustang came by and rattled everyones teeth. Love the smell of racing fuel.

a way cool ’50s style Pro Street chevy.

…a blue Nova with suicide-doors.

a beautifuly finished Riviera.

All in all, a very awesome place to check out and a great showing of some very fine machinery.

See you there next year!

All Photos were taken with a Nikon D-200, Nikor 18-200mm VR lens, San Disk and Lexar memory cards.