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Harbor Cove Beach,
Ventura, California
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Leaving San Diego at 6:09 a.m. would be a curious detail
to remember if not for my obsession with documenting everything. Or
as Sandra more delicately puts it, “Do your crazy thing.”
The lagoons and houses along I-5 north to Los Angeles have an
orderliness about them, a rhythm. The freeway skirts sandy beaches
and rolling hills, impressing those not jaded by having driven it
hundreds of times.
I barely notice them while plotting ill-advised schemes to avoid
the inevitable traffic.
Camp
Pendleton, whose Marines keep Orange County from spreading into
San Diego, buys us a little time. So does a quick stop in
San
Clemente for a soggy, fast-food-chain breakfast sandwich.
One possibility would be to hang a right at
San
Juan Capistrano. There, the
Ortega
Highway transports folks across the Santa Ana Mountains to Lake
Elsinore and I-15. It's tempting, but it shoots us toward Las Vegas
rather than California's central coast. How bad could traffic be?
* * *
Today it is slow but moving. This isn't like trying to get from
Azusa to Culver City during the LA Marathon when I-10 is closed.
There is no 3-hour slog through the streets of South Central. But
that was 20 years ago, let it go already.
This morning the city is a relative blur en route to
Ventura,
an hour to the northwest. Incorporated in 1866, its full name is San
Buenaventura, after 13th-century theologian and philosopher Giovanni
di Fidanza–better known to history as Saint Bonaventure.
The pedestrian-friendly downtown, which features a variety of
boutique shops, would be an ideal spot to stretch our legs if not for
a wrong turn that sends us toward the ocean. Signs for
Channel Islands National Park look promising (“Buenaventura” literally
translates to “good fortune”), so we follow them past another
armada of shops to
Harbor Cove Beach.
There is no time to catch a boat out to the actual islands, only
for a stroll along the still-sleepy beach. High wispy clouds
punctuate a crisp blue sky. A few surfers, birds, and dogs dot the
land.
One man catches clams or crabs. Another, a fisherman, is assaulted
by a kid running naked in the sand. The fisherman quickly spots the
kid's laughing parents, then returns to his business, occasionally
tossing scraps of fish to hovering seagulls.
The breezy salt air and endless blue on the horizon are hypnotic.
It feels like we could stay forever. If you'd have said we'd leave
after 90 minutes to go watch a parade, I'd have called you nuts. But
I'm just the driver, what do I know?
