Camping at San Clemente

After our overnight at Point Mugu, we were fully in camping mode, so we made a reservation for mid-February at San Clemente State Beach, a location about an hour south of us, along the coast on the way to San Diego.  Like Mugu, Clemente had beach access, but given the weather, we'd be up for strolling along the sand more than actually hopping in the water (this Gulf Coaster shudders at the thought of water that cold, even in the summer).

Like at Mugu, check-in was at 2pm, so we spent the morning at home; Chris worked on class for a while, and I did a long run of 14 miles (I'm sure there's a training update coming soon to a blog near you...).  We ate lunch as well, then started packing up the truck, eventually getting out of the driveway around 1:30 or so.  We made it to SCSB just before 3pm, and we quickly checked into our spot and took a survey of the area. We picked a campsite that shared land with just one other plot, and we waved hello to our neighbors, an extended family who'd already stayed on Friday night.  Nice folks.

Before we unpacked too much, we headed to the beach access to see the scenery.  Unlike Mugu, dogs weren't allowed on the beach here, but given the steep access ramp, I was more than willing to wait at the top with the kid while Chris checked out the shoreline.  The campsites at Mugu are on a bluff right along the water, so even from above, the views were lovely.

From atop the bluffs

Chris wandering down the path

That's one of the campsites,

right there on the edge of the cliff.

We want to rent that one some time,

and check out the sunset from there.

Looking toward the access ramp

and visitor center.

"Where did Dad go?!?!?!"

Not too shabby, right?

Chris took this one on his stroll down - 

those are the tracks for

Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner train.

We didn't hear the train in the night,

but lots of Yelp reviewers mentioned it.

After Chris came back up, we wandered across the parking lot shown above and checked out the Visitor Center.  It was in a cute adobe house, and while it was closed at the time, a quick peek through the windows showed me all sorts of exhibits.  I wandered around the grounds for a moment, enjoying the lovely courtyard in the back; while they were bundled up at the time, I could see several strands of twinkle lights, and I bet weddings and other celebrations are commonly held in this area.

We headed back to our site to chill for a bit and finish setting up our home for the night.  For this trip, we'd attempted to improve upon Kaylee's rope system of the previous camping excursion, so we found an inexpensive portable pen, and she checked it out.

We stretched the blanket out for her,

but she preferred balling it up and laying in the dirt.

"Guys, I don't know if I'm cool with this."

Overall, this seemed to work a bit better than the ropes, but next time, we'll probably also employ the stakes that came with the pen to anchor it to the ground; Kaylee quickly figured out she just needed to bump her nose on the pen to make it shuffle along, following us all around the campsite in this manner.  

As the sun was setting, it was back to the top of the bluffs to catch the show; unfortunately, it wasn't spectacular this night, as the clouds stayed in the way most of the time.

Boop!  There it goes!

Sunset or no, it's always time to hug your dog.

We made dinner on the camp stove - sweet potato and black bean tacos, like before, which were fantastic once again - and then had S'Mores for dessert over our campfire (a fair amount of beer was consumed as well, as you might imagine).  Eventually, it was time for bed, and we all slept much better than our night at Mugu, waking relatively refreshed the next morning.  The I-5 freeway is really close to the campground, and you can clearly hear traffic on it all night long; however, since we normally sleep with a noise machine in our room at night, it somewhat replicated that, and none of us really minded.

See?  She's fine.

I don't know how that's comfy,

but whatever.

Per our normal, we were up early the next morning, and we hung out in the tent until the need for both the bathroom and caffeine got us up and moving.

We did egg sandwiches for breakfast again, and Chris and I started cleaning up while someone supervised from the tent:

"Don't forget to pack me!"

We had everything back in the truck and were pulling out of San Clemente around 9am, which was a good thing, once we got home and realized what we had in store for us there.  As Chris was backing the truck into the driveway behind the gate, so we could easily unload our dirty gear into the garage, I opened the garage door and turned around to see this:

Well, shit.

The view from inside.

Unfortunately, this wasn't caused by a freak rock going through our door - oh no.  This was a break-in and robbery, and we spent the rest of the day cleaning up and working with the police (who were lovely) and USAA, our insurance company (also amazing).  While it was super lame to come home to this, we enjoyed our overnight at San Clemente and would love to go back there again, particularly if we can nab that cool spot right on the water.  Fingers crossed for the future, and let us know if you'd like to join us!

Later!

Amy