Why Go Abroad When You Can Go to Orange County?

My wife and I took a one-day holiday recently on the Orange Coast. A doctor had told me it would do me more good to take brief vacations nearby than to drag my luggage halfway round the world.

We were attending Friends of the Library meetings at Saddleback College one night and at the San Juan Capistrano Library the next. We spent both nights at the Marina Inn in Dana Point.

The inn overlooks Dana Point Harbor, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small boats idled at their slips. Of course we were there on a weekday, when most of their owners were probably laboring at their jobs in the electronics industry, real estate, banking and other yuppie pursuits. I did not see one boat leave its slip while we were there.

Like all of Orange County, Dana Point is exploding. Its hills are covered with big, expensive, look-alike new houses, in various stages of construction. They look as if they could not sell for less than $500,000 each. I wondered who their buyers would be, and where they would come from. Surely there are not that many millionaires in Southern California.

Would they be retired people moving down from Los Angeles for the sea breezes and the view of the harbor and the Pacific? Would they be commuters, husbands and wives working to pay the mortgages? Somehow I had a feeling that these houses would never be sold, and that they would bring down disaster on some financial institution.

The same thing is happening all over the county, inland as well as along the coast. This phenomenon appears to be fulfilling the old prophecy that some day there will be a metropolis stretching unbroken from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Nothing seems to be standing in its way now but the 19-mile-stretch of ocean front that is occupied by the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, below San Clemente. Let us hope the Marines can hold this beach.

Saddleback College lies in the hills of lower Mission Viejo, above San Juan Capistrano. It is a pretty little community college, adjoining the Saddleback campus of Cal State Fullerton. Thus, graduates of Saddleback may complete their four-year education at the university. The meeting was in the college’s excellent new fine arts theater. To my surprise, there were more than 300 people present.

We were idle on the day between the two meetings. We had breakfast in Dana Point at a little deli that was decorated with 1920s artifacts, then drove about, and walked through the marina, until it was time for lunch.

For lunch we drove north up Pacific Coast Highway a couple of miles to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. We had never been there. I would like to have spent our two nights there, but I was afraid the rooms were too expensive.

The Ritz-Carlton is everything that name suggests. It stands like an enormous Italian villa on a bluff 150 feet above the surf. Valets in Renaissance hats and pantaloons take your car. Inside one marble hall opens into another. Period furniture gleams. Members of the staff stand attentively at every turn.

We wandered into what appeared to be the library. Bookshelves against the walls held hundreds of antique books with leather bindings. Most were books of literature or philosophy. In French. They looked used, but I doubted that they had been used by any guests of the Ritz-Carlton. More likely they had been bought by the yard. One or two guests were writing letters at period desks; but evidently the main function of the library is to serve as a setting for afternoon tea.

We looked at the menu outside the dining room. I noticed that most entries were thirty-six dollars or thereabouts. The prices were spelled out that way, evidently to make them look less crass.

We had lunch on the terrace of the cafe, at a table under a white umbrella above the seashore. I had the Ritz-Carlton salad, which was a rather exuberant chef’s salad.

After lunch we walked down the road behind the hotel to the beach, which remains open to the public. Tiny human specs made swirling patterns in the surf. Golden bodies were displayed on the sand.

As we strolled back through the hotel two women overtook us. They appeared to be in their 50s. One said, “I’m coming here for my next honeymoon.” I laughed. She added: “I’m a widow.”

The San Juan Capistrano Library is an architectural bonbon--a combination of mission, Moorish and modern. Instead of a large shelving and reading room, it has numerous small enclaves and reading rooms, some with sofas and other comforts, connected by arched corridors and surrounding a Spanish fountain and pool. Its small auditorium was full.

In the morning we had breakfast at the Jolly Roger in Dana Point Harbor and drove home after the commuter traffic had thinned out.

Compared with our bus tour of Egypt and Israel, it was very pleasant indeed.