I had a job in Rancho Santa Margarita, where we actually bout a condo in 2001 for 208K and then sold it 3 years later for $410k. You can imagine what a house would cost. We bought a house in Murrieta, CA (because we couldn't afford to get a house in OC as a marketer) which is a nicer part of Riverside and I commuted about 1 hr 15-30 minutes each way for 5 years or so. There's a mountain road called Ortega Highway that runs from Lake Elsinore to OC, and that's what I took everyday.
The 91 is killer, but there is a 241 Toll road that gets you to South OC pretty quick. BTW...still love SoCal....just not the traffic (OK and the politics and the high cost of living)!