No Weary for the Rest Stop Vendors

At the popular Aliso Creek rest stop on Interstate 5 just north of Oceanside, stranded workers at six not-so-mobile food concession trucks fidgeted away their Wednesday.

Because of the freeway fire, patrons had been cut off at the pass--or, at least, by traffic cones that funneled them onto Camp Pendleton’s congested detour roads, leaving the freeway eerily empty.

“We’re just sitting here and waiting,” sighed a weary Judy Montgomery, a concessionaire from Vista who had held her sales post since Tuesday evening and was eager either to go home or see the freeway reopen.

The scene just wasn’t right. Normally one of Southern California’s most frenetic and carnival-like rest stops for truckers, tourists and long-term transients, the spot was quiet and nearly bare Wednesday. There were some California Highway Patrol officers, a smattering of Caltrans workers--and the six food trucks, lined up along the curb with their sides opened to the world like outstretched arms beckoning customers to their cafeteria come-ons of cookies, cakes and Cokes.

In futility they remained, these marketers of munchies, leaning up against their vehicles, sweeping the asphalt, smoking cigarettes and eating the stuff they would rather sell to customers who this day weren’t to be found.

Why not just head back the 7 miles to Oceanside?

“We can’t just leave the trucks here,” Montgomery said, “and we don’t have the keys to the trucks, and the owners can’t get to us.”

Not that there weren’t some pre-dawn customers, themselves captives of the fire.

“I had one customer who came in at 2:30 this morning,” said Barry Gilkerson of Oceanside. “The freeway was still open, and he decided to take a nap. When he woke up a half-hour later, he realized he shouldn’t have taken that nap. The freeway was closed. He spent a lot of money with me, and finally this morning he just turned around and went back to Oceanside.”

At midday, fire was still burning on both sides of the freeway and along the median, between Las Pulgas Road and San Onofre at the base’s northwestern edge.

The grass and scrub brush around the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint next to the San Onofre nuclear power plant was smoldering, but the buildings were only singed. A dozen or so cars in a dirt parking lot, seized from suspected smugglers, seemed to escape the blaze, too. Across the freeway, flames were still consuming the chaparral at popular San Onofre State Park. The restrooms remained untouched as firefighters stood guard, and the concrete fire pits were undamaged as well.

Within Pendleton’s canyons just to the east of the freeway, brown and white smoke boiled upward, seemingly unchecked. In the foreground, utility crews were working on power lines dangling above already-burned ground.

About 1:45 p.m., the CHP escorted the first caravans of about 300 vehicles through the freeway section, from both directions.

It was like the frustrated start of an Indy 500, the southbound cars out of San Clemente queued up behind the authoritative Mustang with its alternating yellow-and-turquoise flashing lights. For 20 minutes, the gang of 300 seldom got out of first gear.

That first parade stopped three times along the way as a San Diego City fire crew extinguished flames along the median. The CHP officer got out of his cruiser and conferred with firefighters, then resumed. Motorists spent more time looking to the sides than to the vehicles in front of them.

Next to a sign that said “Emergency Parking Only,” flames whirled 20 feet into the air, heating even the inside of air-conditioned cars.

A sign erected by the U.S. Marine Corps in reference to amphibious maneuvers warned: “Caution--Possible Dust Clouds Next 11 Miles.”

The ocean appeared more like a caldron of molten copper as the afternoon sun, filtered by the auburn smoke, was reflected off it.

The vista point overlooking the sea in the middle of Pendleton’s shore was closed to the public. Instead, three helicopters were parked there as if on some impromptu Tarmac.

On one mesa between the freeway and the beach, a lone jet fighter sat on the ground.

By 2:30--after a 45-minute drive that normally takes 20 minutes--the first motorists in nearly 12 hours drove full-speed past the sign that pronounces: “Camp Pendleton--Protecting California’s Precious Resources.”