The Ortega Highway, State Route 74, is a winding snake of a road. It climbs up the mountains from just above sea level in San Juan Capistrano to an altitude of over 4000 feet before descending into Lake Elsinore, where they claim their own Lock Ness-type monster. Los Pinos sits at the summit. San Juan is a bird sanctuary. Every year around the Day of San Juan, October 23, the famous cliff swallows swirl into the sky to return to their wintering grounds in Argentina, 6000 miles south. And they faithfully return every spring in mid-March, a celebration of the cycles of life.
The Ortega Highway, also known as “The Highway of Death,” is infamous in claiming more deaths per mile than any route in the state. It runs thirty miles to Los Pinos and another fifteen down to the lake. Once you hit the hills, it winds and turns continuously, at times along the edge of 400-foot drops into the rocks and San Juan Creek running below. At one point, motorcycle riders actually painted a red starting line in San Juan and a finish line at Look Out Point above the lake. A lot of riders were taken out by this race. There are truckers, campers, and commuters, all driving on The Highway of Death. We almost get taken out.
It’s the summer of 1982 and Paula and I are driving up the Ortega Highway to see a talent show at Los Pinos. We’re in our new Toyota Tercel. We’re just out of San Juan Capistrano on a long straightaway before the single lane road starts to climb the mountains. The road descends and elevates creating numerous blind spots ahead. There’s an old Chevy pickup in front of us doing about 45 miles per hour. We’re running late as usual because Paula always gets scattered doing a half dozen things. So I pull into the oncoming lane to pass just as a tractor-trailer truck roars into view about a hundred yards ahead of us. I immediately take my foot off the brake to slow down and pull in behind the truck but he slows down to let me pass! We’re side by side; there’s no time, no place to go, no discernable shoulder on the side of the road. The 18-wheeler doesn’t even try to slow down! As I pull to the shoulder of the road, what little there is of it, our small car tilts towards at a forty-degree angle, almost tipping over onto the road as the massive truck screams past! At first, we’re not sure we’re alive. But we start breathing and touching each and know we survived.
Ray Lopez, evangelist, writer, ordained minister, ministering to the hardcore, one at a time. 