Shoppers Scramble to Finish Line : Holiday: All the rushing around Friday seemed to be directed toward one goal: a peaceful Christmas Day.

With only hours to go before Christmas, Ventura County residents scrambled Friday to finish their last-minute shopping, stock up on food for holiday dinners and get themselves where they wanted to be for the big day.

“It’s completely out of control,” said Shane Blackstock, a manager at Trader Joe’s grocery store in Thousand Oaks. “But it makes it fun.”

At the HoneyBaked Ham Co. in the Thousand Oaks’ North Ranch Mall, the line of customers stretched outside and around the building, to the dismay of some people who had hoped to make a quick dash to the store.

“We’re shocked,” said Cindy Higl of Camarillo, as she stood in line chatting with other customers. “Last year, there was no line at all.”

Although getting the ham was proving more of a hassle than they had expected, many agreed with Higl, who said it would be worth the wait because she hated to cook during the holiday frenzy.

“It’s easy,” Higl said. “One year I tried cooking turkey. I was in the kitchen all day and I didn’t have time to open presents or greet people.”

And after all the shopping, wrapping and rushing around is done, the whole point of holidays is to enjoy them, many last-minute shoppers said. Some said they planned to head home as soon as they finished making that last purchase.

“I’m only out for an hour,” said Jody Miller as she hurried to her car with a 10-cup coffee maker she had just bought on sale for a gift. Christmas Eve, she said, is time for winding down, to, as she put it, “stop the craziness.”

But many Ventura County residents said they still had to reach the distant home of a relative before they could relax.

Ventura artist Steve Knauff said he hadn’t planned to go anywhere.

But when he twisted his ankle Wednesday, he realized he wouldn’t be able to work and decided at the last minute to travel to his father’s home in Denver. It will be the first Christmas in 12 years he will spend with his father.

“He was shocked when I told him I was coming,” Knauff, 33, said as he stood outside the Buenaventura Mall waiting for an airport bus to take him to Los Angeles International.

Although many county residents flew to their destinations, it seemed that more people than usual chose to drive instead of taking to the skies this Christmas, said Ed Crandall, operations manager for Thrifty Car Rental at Oxnard Airport.

By mid-December, Crandall said, he had already taken reservations for his entire fleet of 150 cars, far more than last year.

Other car rental agencies at the airport also did a brisk business this week. And Crandall suspects that the poor economy is prompting people to rent cars rather than buy airline tickets, especially when it’s a group of people traveling together.

“It’s a lot cheaper,” he said. “The brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts are getting together and saying, ‘Let’s just take a van.’ ”

Gene Bruton was going only as far as San Luis Obispo, where his daughters live.

The 65-year-old retired mechanical engineer crammed 11th-hour purchases into the trunk of his car, parked outside a Ventura shopping center before heading north. “I love driving,” Bruton said. “There’s no mad rush.”

This Christmas is Bruton’s first without his wife, who died recently.

“When I was wrapping the presents, it was a little difficult, because she had always done that,” he said. “It’s going to be a little strange.”

Times staff writer Peggy Y. Lee contributed to this story.