Labor Day, and the Living Is Easy : Recreation: Residents flock to beaches and parks to enjoy the last holiday of the season.

In a shaded corner of Arroyo Verde Park in Ventura on Sunday, Brian Vinson spent one of the last days of his summer strumming a guitar and singing while his friends lingered nearby.

The tunes seemed mostly melancholic and dark, but there was a brightness in the Ventura College student’s eyes when he finished the song.

“That’s the way I used to be,” he said.

His friend, Tony McNelly, said the young people frequently spend summertime weekends in the wooded Ventura Hills park. An apple-red Radio Flyer wagon was parked alongside the group of friends.

“Holidays are for having fun, and putting aside life for a day,” McNelly says, moments before plummeting down the grassy hillside on-board the Flyer.

From the dusty hills around Simi Valley to the sands of San Buenaventura State Beach, Ventura County residents refused to stay indoors Sunday while the last holiday weekend of summer faded like an impending sunset.

Mostly sunny skies and temperatures reaching to the 90s combined to make recreation and relaxation the order of the day. More of the same is forecast for today.

On Ventura County roadways, officials at the California Highway Patrol said the traffic was unusually heavy, even for a holiday weekend.

“We’ve been lucky,” one officer said. “We’ve had only one fatality, and that was on Saturday.”

But CHP officers did arrest 28 people for driving under the influence of alcohol between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Sunday, officials said. Over the entire Labor Day weekend in Ventura County last year, there were 36 DUI arrests, but no fatalities.

Under a hot sun in Thousand Oaks on Sunday, hundreds of youngsters scrambled around Conejo Creek Park, competing in a soccer tournament that organizers said drew 130 teams from throughout Southern California.

Mark Abrams of Calabasas, settling in to watch his 9-year-old play at high noon, said his two-week vacation from his engineering job ends Tuesday.

“It’s kind of a letdown,” he said about the traditional end of summer. “I enjoy being outdoors because I work in an environment where we don’t have windows.”

About five miles north on California 23, in the shadow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, members of the Buffalo Club competed against the clock and each other.

Bitterroot Ranch owner Rick Kinney, who hosts the Moorpark rodeos and barbecue on most holiday weekends, said he expected more people than the 50 or so who showed up Sunday.

“Usually there’s two- or three-hundred people at these shows,” he said. “I guess a lot of people are out of town.”

Judging from the number of people on west county beaches on Sunday, Kinney may have been right.

Along a crowded strip of beach south of Ventura Pier, two young men braced for their return to academia uniquely. Scott Carrick, 15, methodically dripped wet sludgy sand onto Sean Patten’s head.

“We just felt like making fools of ourselves,” said Scott, who lives in Camarillo but attends private school in Carpinteria.

The syrupy mixture formed a pointy cone on top of Sean’s skull. “It’s hard to hear with sand in my ears,” he mumbled, before saying he would return to Monte Vista School in Camarillo next week.

At the Eastminster Presbyterian Church on Telephone Road, more than 100 people spent part of their Labor Day weekend raising money for their congregation with a lemon festival.

“It means the routine is beginning again,” festival director Elli Busch said about the end of summer. “Everybody’s got to get back to their normal routines.”