4 Corners, 4 Very Different Worlds

Take a good map, a tank of gas, and within the course of a single day the curious traveler can discover in the outer reaches of Orange County:

- Morning mist rising over a peaceful sea as shore fishermen haul in the first bonito of the day.

- Soft green canyons to amble through on a leisurely lunchtime horseback ride.

- Picnic spots on mountainsides flecked with changing leaves and surrounded by lowering clouds, the snapping chill of early winter in the air.

- One of the best surfing beaches in the region, dotted by rocky tide pools and made golden by the late afternoon sun.

It will, however, take between 230 and 250 miles of driving, for some of the county’s most striking sights are in its four corners--its northernmost, southernmost, easternmost and westernmost points.

Visits to the four corners prove that the 798.5-square-mile county is not simply a suburban panorama, a puzzle of freeways or a conglomeration of bedroom communities. The day traveler can explore four worlds, all within the same political boundaries, all governed by the same county officials.

“I think that the county is pretty unique in the sense that in one hour you can get from one geographic location to another and see different terrains and different populations, different residences, or go from a residential to a non-residential area,” said Bob Anderson, a surveyor supervisor with the surveyor’s office of the Orange County Environmental Management Agency.

The journey begins at the western edge of county territory.

Seal Beach, 8:15 a.m.

The water between the two jetties extending oceanward from the Long Beach Marina is flat and gray in the morning light. Tiny waves lap against the rocks. A few sea gulls squawk. Offshore, the morning fog is beginning to burn off, revealing the nearest oil drilling islands and occasionally setting off a high-pitched foghorn. While much of Orange County is going to work, the eastern marina jetty, the westernmost piece of land on the county map (technically, the western tip of the county is three miles out to sea), barely stirs.

But Humberto and Kunigunde Pineda have decided that this is the perfect time to hike out to the light at the end of the jetty. Negotiating the rocks to the end of the jetty is arduous, but they seem to be carried along purely by enthusiasm for their surroundings. They are here from San Antonio, Tex., visiting their son, a Navy ensign stationed in San Diego.

Their son told them they should visit Southern California. “He said, ‘Everything’s perfect,’ ” says Humberto Pineda, grinning. “We saw some fishermen out here the other day, and they looked like they were enjoying themselves, so we decided to come out too.”

Kunigunde Pineda, a native of Bayreuth, Germany, says she and her husband “thought it was just too beautiful to be true out here. It’s so healthy here in the morning, and the people are very friendly.”

As the Pinedas make their way across several hundred yards of rock, Rocky Gordon, friend of the pigeon and the sea gull, is on the shore end of the jetty, standing amid birds as they swoop in flight.

“I’m retired from Douglas (Aircraft),” Gordon says, “and I play golf four mornings a week. So after I play, I come down here and feed these ding-a-ling birds.”

Gordon, who lives in Los Alamitos, has been coming to the jetty to feed the birds for about four years and has built up something of a following among them. He feeds them dry dog food from a bag, and they gobble it up greedily.

“My dog won’t eat it,” he says. “But these birds, they’ll do everything but bark.”

Carbon Canyon Road, Brea, 11:30 a.m.

The northernmost boundary of Orange County is easy to find on the map but hard to find in reality. Geographically, it is a straight line running across the northern borders of the cities of Brea and La Habra and through hilly unincorporated territory north of Brea.

Along that border are stretches of open land as well as residential neighborhoods. And about a quarter mile from the San Bernardino County line, in Brea’s Carbon Canyon, lives Hob Taylor.

Taylor, a mortgage banker, and his wife, Felicia, own and live at the North Orange County Saddle Club, where they board and train horses that compete in English riding events. The club is in a quiet, green hollow in a bend of Carbon Canyon Road just southwest of the town of Sleepy Hollow, across the county line. It is a backcountry area, seemingly remote as a mountain resort, yet is just a 15-minute drive from Cal State Fullerton.

“This still feels like Orange County to me,” Taylor says, “although it is kind of like the last frontier. You feel out of the mainstream a little bit. We’re kind of like an island in the canyon, and we give a lot of directions to people who drive through.”

At lunchtime, the road running past the Taylor home and stables is mostly quiet, with only an occasional passing car. However, Taylor says, even Carbon Canyon Road has morning and evening rush hours, when it is filled with commuters driving into and out of Orange County.

“In the morning and evening it’s like a freeway out there,” Taylor says.

Still, life as a northernmost Orange County resident has slowed him down.

“We used to live in Sunny Hills before we moved out here,” Taylor says. “Now when we go back there to visit, it seems like the big city. It feels like people are right on top of each other there.”

Los Pinos Conservation Camp, Cleveland National Forest, 2 p.m.

Nearly 25 miles north of Interstate 5 on Ortega Highway, just inside the wedge-shaped eastern tip of the county, Harold Cook presides over almost 90 juvenile delinquents in wooded country he says resembles the most common images of Orange County not at all.

Cook is the director of the camp, a collection of rustic brown buildings reached by a two-mile drive up a narrow, steep road branching off Ortega Highway. There, juveniles ages 16 to 19 who have been convicted of minor crimes (burglary, Cook said, is common) attend school and learn about forestry and conservation. They stay an average of six months at the camp, which is operated by the Orange County Probation Department.

A visitor who drives to the camp from San Juan Capistrano will see the roadside scenery change from flatlands and rolling green hills to sharper peaks and steep valleys, dotted by sycamores with their fall colors. The air is clear, crisp and cold. It is, Cook says, about as far from urban Orange County as one can get and still remain in the county.

“It doesn’t feel like Orange County here,” he says. “It feels like another world, like being in the mountains. If you drive from the beach to up here, you see incredible diversity. You realize that everything in Orange County doesn’t look like South Coast Plaza.”

In fact, Cook says, the camp was once an Indian village. Ancient cutting and cooking tools have been found on the grounds.

The advantages of the surroundings are not lost on the residents, he says. “I think the place has a real calming effect on them,” Cook says. “Our runaway rate is very low. The beauty of the area makes them feel serene. We’re nature’s guests here, and we try to impress that on the kids. We try to teach them that the area isn’t meant to be defaced; it’s meant to be preserved.”

Trestles Beach, San Clemente, 4 p.m.

This southern tip of Orange County is known throughout the world as the site of the former Western White House, the home President Richard Nixon named Casa Pacifica. The compound sits on a bluff overlooking the beach that a brooding, embattled Nixon once walked alone at the height of the Watergate scandal.

However, the beach below Casa Pacifica has long been known as one of the finest surfing spots in Southern California. When surfers speak of riding the waves at Trestles, this is the spot they mean.

The beach takes its name from a weathered wooden railroad trestle spanning part of the marshy area set back from the sand. San Diego-bound passenger trains rumble over it several times each day.

You have to hike a bit to get to Trestles. A paved path that begins next to a bridge over the Interstate 5 descends through thickets of scrub brush, obliging surfers to carry their boards for perhaps 15 minutes before their feet touch sand. Some, however, ride bicycles, motorcycles or skateboards.

It is chilly in the late afternoon, and Jill Sekiguchi and George Borras, both members of the USC surfing team, are wearing wet suits. They pick their way out of the surf and over the flat stretch of smooth rocks that separates the sand from the surf, gingerly making the maneuver Sekiguchi calls “rock dancing.” The two 19-year-olds, who are majoring in biology, decide to pause at a tide pool to watch the small marine life there.

“It’s kind of nice here because we can practice surfing and do our homework at the same time,” says Borras. “I think it’s one of the best places to surf. There are waves here today and every place else is like a lake. It’s shallow here, and the waves tend to break best where it’s shallowest.”

Borras says he knows he is at Orange County’s southernmost point “because I’ve looked at the Thomas Brothers maps before and you can see the county line running right through the beach here.”

For Sakeguchi, who lives in La Canada Flintridge, the trip to her grandmother’s beach house in San Clemente is a long one. And the walk to the beach and the rugged climb across the rocks are hardships, she says. But like others who journey to unfamiliar locations in search of new sights and experiences, Sekiguchi says the effort is worth it.

“It’s hard getting here,” she says, rock dancing toward the shore, “but you should see the smiles we wear when we’re out there.”

NORTH: The northern border of Orange County, left, runs in a straight line through Carbon Canyon and along the borders of Brea and La Habra. The area is characterized by stretches of open land as well as by residential neighborhoods.

EAST: Los Pinos Conservation Camp, below, is home to 90 juvenile delinquents. Nearly 25 miles north of Interstate 5 on Ortega Highway, it is, its director says, about as far from urban Orange County as one can get and still remain in the county.

WEST: As the morning fog begins to clear, Humberto Pineda, above, takes a snapshot of the seaside scene from Seal Beach jetty, on eastern side of Long Beach Marina, as his wife, Kunigunde, watches. “It’s so healthy here in the morning, and the people are very friendly,” Kunigunde says. The couple, visitors from San Antonio, Tex., hiked across several hundred yards of rock to reach this vantage point.

SOUTH: George Borras, below left, and Jill Sekiguchi, both members of the USC surfing team, do some “rock dancing” to get to Trestles Beach in San Clemente, long known as one of the finest surfing spots in Southern California. Getting to the water is not easy Sekiguchi says, but the effort is worth it. “It’s hard getting here,” she says, “but you should see the smiles we wear when we’re out there.”