by South of Dana Point on the 405 freeway I saw a sign reading ‘Vista Point Ahead’ and decided to stop to enjoy whatever view the California Dept. of Transportation thought worthy of a roadside pullout. When I made that decision I realized that for decades I would have just driven by under the pressure of having to be somewhere by a certain time.
I smiled. Not on this trip. I was on the road across America. I intended to stop and go as I wished with only check-in times at hotels as my deadlines.
As it turned out this Vista Point was the perfect place for my first impulse stop. Thanks to the rains in California from the tropical ‘oceanic river’ flowers were blooming in floods of color spread across the landscape.
It wasn’t those flowers that CDOT wanted travelers to see, however. They were transitory. It was a circular terrace with pointers identifying the various Channel Islands offshore, among them San Clemente.
Until that moment I’d forgotten all about the night back in the 1970s when about 15 of us were stranded on a scuba diving boat that had scraped a reef near the Cortes Banks, a seamount about 90 miles offshore, and opened a hole in the hull. To avoid sinking to the bottom thousands of feet below the boat captain sought shelter at San Clemente where, it was assumed, we could all swim to shore if the boat sank. The next day the Coast Guard towed us back to San Diego. It was the last time I went scuba diving.
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