We Decide to Vacation at San Onofre, CA

Helen and I don’t consider RV travel a vacation. We view it as living our lives in a variety of locations. Some of those locations are amazing, but we have all the chores that are part of our everyday routine. There’s laundry, cleaning, cooking, trash disposal, and I could go on–you get my drift

In many of those delightful locations, we visit local attractions, treat ourselves to a nice meal at a local restaurant, or shop for fresh seafood and vegetables at local markets. Our most recent campground is in Seal Beach, CA, and we made the short drive to Long Beach, CA, for the Sunday Farmer’s Market at the Marina. The vegetable displays included fresh vegetables of every variety, which were impossible to pass up. We did pass on fresh eggs–they were too pricey for our food budget. (Click on the images to view)

After two weeks of camping at Seal Beach, we moved down the coast to San Onofre Recreational Beach, one of two oceanfront campgrounds on Marine Base Camp Pendelton. We camped at San Onofre for several days last summer and vowed to return. San Onofre is a beautiful campground, and the campsites are on the beach. The picture below illustrates how close we were to the waterfront. Our red truck is in the upper portion of the image.

Helen and I decided to make this stop as much of a vacation as possible. We ventured out rarely and let everything in front of us serve as our entertainment. It was a good call, but we had to endure two days of heavy rain before our vacation began.

Once the skies cleared, a company of Marines moved in for a heavy dose of exercise on the sandy beach. They began with sit-ups with arms interlocked, then started doing push-ups in a chain of men with legs extended over the shoulders of the Marines behind. They also ran sprints carrying another Marine on their backs. I was exhausted just watching the drill.

Another element of our daily entertainment included dozens of surfers riding the waves. They arrived before sunrise and remained long after the sun went down. Most of them were very skilled and fun to watch as they scooted through water tunnels to the shoreline.

We spent our days walking, reading, cooking some great seafood, and generally taking it easy until about 5:30 every afternoon when the real entertainment began. Our trailer sat on our campsite in a manner that afforded an unobstructed view of the sunset, and those sunsets were stunning. I attached a 70-200 mm zoom lens to my camera and captured the dazzling spectacle almost every evening. I have shared some of the more dramatic ones below.

By now, I’m confident I have lulled everyone to sleep with our semi-lazy lifestyle, but that captures much of our stay here—and we loved it. We did take one side trip to San Juan Capistrano, which I’ll share in the next post. For now, I’m off to my nap.

We’re Easin’ Along and loving it!