Destination in Street Name : Beach Enthusiasts Endure Ride Down Busy Boulevard to Reach Sand, Water

The bus arrives each morning at 10:08.

For more than an hour, it has been rumbling along the 20-mile span of Beach Boulevard vibrating with the bumps in the road as it stops intermittently to pick up passengers. Now the big orange and green vehicle has reached its destination, pulling up alongside the curb at the beach to disgorge a load of water-craving teen-agers.

“It takes forever,” complains Erika Anderson, 16, who has ridden all the way from La Habra with several friends for a day in the sun. “They make every stop, don’t play any music and the people are kind of strange.”

Yet every summer she makes this pilgrimage, along with thousands of others in buses and in cars. All of them follow Beach Boulevard, a street whose name reveals its ultimate destination. Orange County’s busiest surface street, it is the traditional route from the county’s northwest corner to the coast, a road that weaves in and out of local history even as it passes by tourist traps, cemeteries, hamburger joints, car dealers, coffee houses, adult theaters and gas stations of the present day.

“It’s my favorite,” says Darlene Stephan, a.k.a. Sarge, a bus driver who has been following the boulevard on and off for 20 years. “You just put your foot on it and go. This is the perfect route for me; I love the sound of water.”

The sound she loves comes from the surf at the end of the line, the place where Beach Boulevard finally reaches its junction with Pacific Coast Highway and pavement meets sand. Welcome to the beach at the end of Beach.

“It’s refreshing,” Sarge said, putting her face to the cool ocean breeze. “It gives me a feeling of security and tranquility. It just kind of soothes my nerves.”

Wind and sand aren’t the only things here, of course. On one corner is the weatherbeaten Driftwood Beach Club Mobile Home Park and golf course where residents and visitors can sharpen their putting skills almost within moistening distance of the ocean’s spray. Across the street is Action Boat Brokers, its yard filled with gleaming speedboats adorned by canopies of green, blue and red. And across PCH on the ocean side sits the large parking lot wherein beach lovers can leave their cars for $5 a day ($6 on weekends) while they soak up the sun.

But the most prominent features of this particular dot on the map are the junction itself--a wide expanse of pavement over which flows a seemingly endless migration of beach-goers--and, beyond that, the gleaming stretch of hot sand.

“It’s beautiful down here,” said Jamiec Miller, 29, who comes to the beach about three times a week during summer. “It makes me feel healthy to come and see the waves.”

Lisa Rubick, 17, said she takes every possible opportunity to follow the boulevard from her home in La Mirada to the shore. “It’s closest to where I live,” the teen-ager said, shielding her eyes from the sun as she lay on a towel. “I just like the beach.”

As beaches go, this one is well-equipped.

Besides the usual restrooms, fire rings and volleyball nets, there’s a basketball court next to white tables with colorful umbrellas. For those wishing to exercise, blade skate and bicycle rentals are available. And anyone needing nourishment can buy hamburgers, burritos or ice cream at Zack’s Too, a combination snack bar/souvenir shop at the edge of the strand.

Because of the busy boulevard, lifeguards say, this beach tends to attract larger crowds than elsewhere, mostly visitors from other places, which results in an increased number of rescues of swimmers and lost children. “We get a lot of people who aren’t as accustomed to the marine environment as some of the locals are,” marine safety officer Matt Karl said. “People here aren’t as marine-oriented.”

Unseasonably low temperatures this summer have thinned out the crowds, he said. Yet on a recent weekday afternoon, the beach was abuzz with the usual summer activities. Bicyclists and skaters zipped along a cement pathway bordering the beach. Couples smooched on the sand while youngsters frolicked in the surf. And far away, dimly outlined by the sinking sun near the water’s edge, a father frantically chased a runaway kite while his children looked on in undisguised delight.

“This is a nice place to bring the kids,” an out-of-breath Bernd Freytag huffed later, returning with the errant kite in tow. “The surf is good, the beach is clean.”

As Freytag huffed, the waves kept rolling in, as lazy as always. And while the traffic roared as usual along Beach Boulevard just a few hundred feet to the north, the rhythmic roar of the ocean here provided a backdrop for the calmness at journey’s end.

None of this appeared to be lost on Greg Smith, 25, as he lay on his back by the steaming sand, staring motionlessly up at the sky of a glorious summer afternoon. “I am resting,” he patiently explained. “I like to look at the sea gulls. They offer a little excitement.”

Such is life on a perfect day near summer’s end at the terminus of Orange County’s most-traveled surface street.