The 2011 car cruise season finally kicks off in Historic Downtown Parkville

Finally! After several long, cold months of suffering, the car cruise season is officially underway in the Kansas City area. And the first one I hit was able to hit was the Parkville Cruise in Historic Downtown Parkville.

Last week it snowed around here, so it would have been easy to be apprehensive about the weather for this event. Those fears were unfounded, however, because it couldn't have been any nicer.

You can tell people were suffering from cabin fever, because there was a very large selection of hot rods, classics, and muscle cars in the English Landing parking area. Burgers and hot dogs were grillin', the D.J. was spinnin', and everyone was having a good time.

There were a couple of things that stand out as unusual at this car cruise. For one, several high-school age kids dressed up in formal dance attire were having their pictures taken in the bed of a Hudson pickup.

And second, KISS cover band "Almost KISS" was performing across the street. They were pretty entertaining. They had all the KISS favorites down, they jammed pretty hard, and "Almost Gene" interacted with the crowd. There were several people there in real KISS and Almost KISS T-shirts, so I think the groupies knew they were coming.

There also had to be ten trains pass by while I was there. The D.J. made a point to tell everyone to wave at them every time they passed by. It did create a little bit of havoc with the traffic when the trains blocked the road. And there was quite a bit of traffic regardless of the car show, because English Landing Park was open and the weather was nice. The main thing was you really had to pay attention to your kids there, because all the roads around and through the cruise were hoppin'.

Needless to say, since it was the first cruise of the year for me, I got carried away with the car pictures. There are no less than 146 of them in the slideshow below.

The next Parkville Cruise takes place on Saturday, May 7, 4:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.